/ t- 



GREEK FORESHADOWING^ 



OF 



MODERN METAPHYSICAL AND 
EPISTEMOLOGICAL THOUGHT 



BY 

LILLIAN KUPFER 



(A Thesis accepted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 
in New York University, 1901) 



O O > 3 



PRINTED BY J. S. CUSHLNG & CO. 

NORWOOD, MASS. 

1901 



U 



1 



The library of 

CONGRESS, 

Two Copies Received 

DEC, 1 1901 

CWVRKJHT ENTRY 

CLASS Ou XXa No. 

i_ 2_ ^ v r^ 
copy a 



Copyright, 1901, 
By LILLIAN KUPFER. 



*3 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Bibliography . 5 



Introduction 



I. THE ESSENCE OF THINGS 



Conceptions of Ionians, Pythagoreans, Parmenides, Heraclitus, Em- 
pedocles, Anaxagoras, Leucippus and Democritus, Plato, Aris- 
totle, Stoics, Epicureans, and Skeptics .... v . 9 

Comparisons with modern views, particularly those of Kepler, Gali- 
leo, Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, Berkeley, Leibniz, Fichte,,.-. 
Schelling, Hegel, Herbart, Lotze, and the Physicists -'*' . 13 

II. THE WORLD GROUND 

Conceptions of Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, Plato, Aris- 
totle, Stoics, Epicureans, Skeptics, and Neoplatonists . . 19 

Comparisons with modern theism, pantheism, and atheism, and in 
particular with the views of Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, Schelling, 
Hegel, and Spencer • . .25 

III. SPACE AND TIME 

Conceptions of Parmenides, Zeno, Plato, Aristotle, and Epicureans 30 
Comparisons with modern views as represented by Berkeley, Leibniz, 

Kant, Lotze, and Bowne 32 

IV. CONCEPTIONS OF EVOLUTION 

Views of Ionians (especially Anaximander) , Heraclitus, Empedo- 
cles, Anaxagoras, Leucippus and Democritus, Plato, Aristotle, 
Stoics, and Epicureans 33 

Comparisons with modern ideas, especially those of Leibniz, Darwin, 

Spencer, and the purely mechanical theories of evolution . . 36 

3 



CONTENTS 



V. CONCEPTIONS OF CAUSALITY 



PAGE 



Views of Ionians, Pythagoreans, Eleatics, Heraclitus, Empedocles, 
Anaxagoras, Protagoras, Democritus, Plato, Aristotle, Stoics, 
Epicureans, and Skeptics, (especially Aenesidemus) ... 39 

Comparisons with modern ideas, particularly those of Bacon, Gali- 
leo, Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hume, Kant, Fichte, 
Schelling, Hegel, Positivists, Spencer, Lotze, Bowne, and 
Bradley 45 



v VI. THE RELATION OF THOUGHT TO ITS OBJECT 

Epistemological views of Heraclitus, Parmenides, Zeno, Empedocles, 
Anaxagoras, Protagoras, Socrates, Democritus, Plato, Aristotle, 
Stoics, Epicureans, and Skeptics 49 

Comparisons with ideas of modern philosophers, in particular those 
of Galileo, Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Berkeley, Leib- 
niz, Wolff, Hume, Kant, Fichte, Positivists, Mill, Lotze, and 
Spencer 56 

Conclusion 63 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



Aristotle 



Berkeley, George . 
Bowne, Borden P. . 



Bradley, F. H. . . . 

Bywater, I 

Descartes, Rene" . . 

Erdmann, J. E. . . 

Fairbanks, Arthur 

Falckenberg, Richard. 

Hegel, G. W. F. 



Hume, David 



Kant, Immanuel 

Ladd, J. Trumbull 
Lassalle, Ferd. . 

Leibniz, G. W. . 
Locke, John . . 



Metaphysics. Translated by John H. M'Mahon. 
London. 1891. 

Organon. Oxford. 1837. 

Physics. Translated by Thomas Taylor. Lon- 
don. 1806. 

Works. Edited by A. C. Fraser. 4 vols. Ox- 
ford. 1871. 

Metaphysics. New York. 1898. 

Theory of Thought and Knowledge. New York. 
1899. 

Appearance and Reality. London. 1897. 

Heracliti Ephesii Reliquiae. Oxford. 1877. 

The Method, Meditations, and Principles. Trans- 
lated by John Veitch. Edinburgh. 1890. 

A History of Philosophy. 3 vols. London. 
1891. 

The First Philosophers of Greece. New York. 
1898. 

History of Modern Philosophy. Translated by 
A. C. Armstrong. New York. 1893. 

Logic. Translated by William Wallace. Ox- 
ford. 1892. 

Philosophy of Mind. Translated by William 
Wallace. Oxford. 1894. 

Vorlesungen tiber die Geschichte der Philosophic 
3 vols. Berlin. 1833-1836. 

An Enquiry concerning the Human Understand- 
ing. Oxford. 1894. 

A Treatise on Human Nature. 2 vols. London. 
1878. 

Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Max 
Muller. New York. 1896. 

Philosophy of Knowledge. New York. 1897. 

Die Philosophic Herakleitos des Dunklen von 
Ephesos. 2 vols. Berlin. 1858. 

La Monadologie ; Nouveaux Essais. Paris. 1846. 

Essay on Human Understanding. 3 vols. Lon- 
don. 1812. 
5 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



Lotze, Hermann 

Lucretius Cams, T 

Mill, John Stuart 

Mullach, F. W. A. 

Patrick, G. T. W. 

Patrick, Mary M. 

Plato .... 

Schleiermacher, Fr 

Spencer, Herbert 
Spinoza, B. de 

Ueberweg, Fr. 

Watson, John 

Weber, Alfred 

Windelband, W 

Zeller, E. 



Metaphysic. Edited by B. Bosanquet. 2 vols. 
Oxford. 1887. 

De Rerum Natura. rec. H. A. J. Munro. Cam- 
bridge. 1860. 

Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philoso- 
phy. 2 vols. Boston. 1866. 

Eragmenta Philosophorum Graecorum. 3 vols. 
Paris. 1860, 1867, 1881. 

The Fragments of the Work of Heraclitus on 
Nature. Baltimore. 1889. 

Sextus Empiricus and Greek Skepticism. Cam- 
bridge. 1899. 

Dialogues. Translated by B. Jowett. 4 vols. 
New York. 1871. 

Herakleitos der Dunkle von Ephesos. Berlin. 
1838. 

First Principles. New York. 1888. 

Ethics. Translated by R. H. M. Elwes. Lon- 
don. 1891. 

History of Philosophy. Translated by George S. 
Morris. 2 vols. New York. 1872 and 1874. 

Schelling 1 s Transcendental Idealism. Chicago. 
1892. 

History of Philosophy. Translated by Frank 
Thilly. New York. 1897. 

A History of Philosophy. Translated by James 
H. Tufts. New York. 1893. 

A History of Greek Philosophy to the Time of 
Socrates. Translated by S. F. Alleyne. 2 vols. 
London. 1881. 

Socrates and the Socratic Schools. Translated 
by 0. J. Reichel. London. 1877. 

Plato and the Older Academy. Translated by 
S. F. Alleyne and Alfred Goodwin. London. 
1876. 

Aristotle and the Earlier Peripatetics. Trans- 
lated by Castelloe and Muirhead. 2 vols. 
London. 1897. 

The Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics. Trans- 
lated by 0. J. Reichel. London. 1892. 

A History of Greek Eclecticism. Translated by 
S. F. Alleyne. London. 1881. 



INTRODUCTION 

One of the first and most urgent tasks of philosophy is the 
endeavor to discover beneath the ceaseless flux of things in 
common experience some immutable foundation. Does the 
history of philosophy itself, amid its ever-changing systems, 
bring to view any abiding principles, or must we regard it 
simply as a record of arbitrary standpoints assumed without 
sufficient reason and severally abandoned? Does each new 
system, discarding all the labors of its predecessors, start 
afresh in its attempt to explain the mysteries of the universe 
or is the new philosophy a development and consummation of 
the old? 

These questions must be faced by every student of the his- 
tory of philosophy. If the earlier systems are to be entirely 
repudiated and only the latest products of speculation admitted 
within the province of validity, then indeed must philosophy 
be condemned as the most futile of sciences and its objects be 
acknowledged as forever unattainable. 

To save philosophy from this reproach, we must find in it 
some permanent elements which persist amid its changes. 
Such abiding principles reveal themselves in certain funda- 
mental conceptions which, originating with the earliest philoso- 
phers, have appeared again and again in the history of thought, 
at [each revival in more definite form. To the objection that 
not one, but many and apparently opposing views of the world 
have been revived, we may answer that the impulses which at 
one time drive to the front one of these fundamental views 
and at another time another, may be explained by recognizing 
the fact that the spirit of the times, the state of culture, the 
social and political condition, and the aims, convictions, and 

7 



8 INTRODUCTION 

ideals of the people through whom a system of philosophy- 
receives its expression form a vital factor in the evolution of 
its type, while the special interest or personality of the repre- 
sentative individual thinkers — another important factor — 
accounts for the contemporaneous appearance of systems which 
approach the ever-recurring problems of philosophy from oppo- 
site standpoints. But, since the opposing theories often reveal, 
on closer analysis, agreements as striking as are their differ- 
ences, we may come to realize the fact that in the midst of 
many errors these rival systems all present some aspect of the 
truth. 

The purpose of this paper is to point out some of the endur- 
ing features of philosophy by calling attention to certain 
approximations of Greek conceptions to modern speculative 
thought. We shall try to show that many germs of truth 
which for ages lay inert have revealed their fructifying power 
when stirred to renewed life and activity by some philosophic 
demand similar to that to which they owed their origin; and 
that the forms in which the fundamental problems of philoso- 
phy present themselves to the human mind, as well as the 
general direction by which their solution is approached, have, 
in the course of history, undergone no change so radical as to 
debar us from attributing to them some elements of permanent 
validity. 

In order to keep the paper within proper bounds, no com- 
parison will be attempted in the field of ethics, psychology, or 
sociology, the scope of the treatment being limited, as the title 
suggests, to the most important problems of metaphysics and 
epistemology. 



THE ESSENCE OF THINGS 

The unreflecting mind accepts things as they appear, with- 
out question as to their origin or comment on their mutability. 
When the development of life, the movement of the heavenly 
bodies, the composition and dissolution of objects, and the 
countless phenomena of nature press for explanation, then, 
however crude may be the attempted solution of the problem, 
the first step has been taken in the direction of a philosophy. 
For a time further inquiry is silenced by the theory that super- 
natural beings are responsible for all such manifestations, but 
soon the spirit of investigation awakes in an effort to find 
some ultimate abiding principle from which may be directly 
deduced the changing phases of nature. It is at this point 
that the first philosophers appear upon the Greek stage with 
a philosophy of nature that directs its chief inquiry toward the 
origin of the universe. 

The Ionians, — Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes, 
— starting with the supposition that there exists some cosmic 
substance out of which are developed the complex and multi- 
form objects of the universe, direct their energies to the dis- 
covery of the nature of this physical element. Thales decides 
upon water as his material substratum, Anaximander on an 
infinite matter undetermined in quality (to a-rreipov), and Anax- 
imenes on air. Each of these elements is characterized by a 
mobility which lends color to the hylozoistic theory that it is 
endowed from eternity with the principle of life and motion. 

Viewed from a different standpoint, the same problem re- 
ceives through the Pythagoreans a totally different solution. 
While the Ionians were essentially physicists, the Pythago- 

9 



10 



THE ESSENCE OF THINGS 



reans constituted a society of men banded together for the pur- 
pose of instituting moral reforms and cultivating the various 
arts and sciences. The mathematical sciences, in particular, 
were centered in this school ; but the Pythagoreans were 
also far advanced in the knowledge of astronomy and music. 
Consequently they became impressed with the harmony and 
order which govern alike the motions of the heavenly bodies, 
the laws of music, and the moral life. But just as musical har- 
mony is dependent on numerical relations, so, argue the Pythag- 
oreans, is all harmony conditioned. /Thus they arrive at the 
conclusion that all things are ordered in numerical relations, 
from which they deduce the further proposition that number 
is the essence of physical reality, and unity the essence of 
number. The whole world of becoming arises from the oppo- 
sition of the one and the many. In the detailed working out 
of their theory, the Pythagoreans assign to each number some 
special significance for reality. Thus physical qualities are 
symbolized by the number five ; light, health, and intellect by 
seven ; love and wisdom by eight ; perfection by ten, etc. 

The starting point of Parmenides is the thought that only 
being (defined as a space-filling substance) can exist, that there 
is no non-being ; in other words, no void. But if no non-being 
exists from which being can arise or into which it can disap- 
pear, then being must be eternal and unchangeable. Since 
without a void all motion is impossible, birth, change, plural- 
ity, and decay are mere appearance. The one eternal, invaria- 
ble, and indivisible being is conceived as a perfect sphere which 
includes within itself all possible determinations, even that of 
thought. As will be seen later, the antithesis of a permanent 
reality to the changing phenomena is closely connected with 
Parmenides' theory of knowledge, which contrasts the perma- 
nence and validity of knowledge derived from thought with the 
illusive nature of the content of sensation and experience. 

Heraclitus, on the contrary, becomes so deeply impressed 
with the flux of things that, so far from considering change the 
illusion which Parmenides would make of it, he sees in it the 
sole reality. As the most mobile and variable of all elements, 



V 



THE ESSENCE OE THINGS 11 

he looks upon fire as the process of change, and therefore as 
the source of things. " All things are exchanged for fire, and 
fire for all things. 1 The transformations of fire are, first, the 
sea, and of the sea half is earth and half the lightning flash. 2 
The world is an ever-living fire, kindled in due measure and 
in due measure extinguished." 3 The one thing abiding amidst 
the changing phenomena is the fixed law of change or becom- 
ing. In this alone is the essence of things expressed. 

From a combination of the Eleatic conception of an abid- 
ing being and the Heraclitic recognition of reality in becoming 
arise the philosophies of Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and the 
Atomists, which aim to reconcile the permanence of being with 
the change observable in phenomena. As a change in spatial 
relations seems to these philosophers the only change which 
can leave unaltered the qualities of being, they assume a num- 
ber of primal, unchangeable elements, through the combination 
of which all individual things arise and through the separation 
of which they pass away. Four elements in the system of 
Empedocles are substituted for the one posited by the lonians. 
"First I learned of the four roots of all things — fire and 
water and earth and the immense height of ether. From these 
have arisen whatever things have been, will be, or now are." 4 
Two forces, love and hate, applied respectively to the mixture 
and separation of the four unchangeable but divisible ele- 
ments (pi£<o//,aTa) are further assumed to account for the 
multiplicity of things. 

These four roots of Empedocles are transformed by Anax- 
agoras into an unlimited number of unchangeable elements, 
qualitatively distinct and infinitely divisible, called by Anax- 
agoras himself to. (nrip^ara, but by later writers ra 6/xoto/u-ep^. 
Each of these elements is present in everything, the predomi- 
nance of a particular element giving to any substance its essen- 
tial characteristics. To the combination or separation of these 
elements in varying quantities, Anaxagoras, like Empedocles, 

1 Bywater, Heracliti Ephesii Reliquiae, Frag. XXII. 

2 Ibid., Frag. XXI. 3 i^fd., Frag. XX. 
4 Mullach, Fragmenta Philosophorum Graecorum, vol. I, p. 2. 



12 THE ESSENCE OF THINGS 

attributes all genesis and dissolution, but in the system of 
Anaxagoras there is but one active force, mind (vovs), the sole 
power sufficient to account for the design and harmony mani- 
fested in nature. Yet the vov? is, in turn, conceived as one of 
the elements, lighter and purer than all the rest, a thought 
stuff, which is the source of motion in the other elements. 

The atoms of Leucippus and Democritus are in two 
respects distinguished from the homoiomeriai. They are indi- 
visible and alike in quality, differing only in form and magni- 
tude, and they are endowed with an inherent motive force. 
Non-being, or the void, as the condition of motion, becomes, 
for the Atomists, a principle as necessary as being. The 
coming together of the atoms in space, through their inherent 
force, gives rise to all generation, and the separation of the 
combined atoms to all decay. It is the attribute of filling 
space, a quantitative not a qualitative determination, that 
constitutes the essence of being. We shall find that this 
metaphysical conclusion of the Atomists harmonizes with their 
epistemological theory that the qualities of things perceived 
by the senses are mere appearance, and that thought alone can 
apprehend the true reality — the atom forms. 

Plato's philosophy is a completion and systematization 
of the views of Socrates. Like his teacher, he considers the 
moral life the essential thing, and exalts philosophy chiefly 
because he feels that virtue is dependent on knowledge. Plato 
agrees with Socrates that true knowledge is to be gained only 
through conceptual thinking, and that universality and invari- 
ability are essential characteristics of the concept. But if the 
objects toward which conceptual thinking is directed are to 
share this attribute of unchangeableness, they cannot be 
sought in the sensuous world. Good things and beautiful 
things arise and pass away; only ideal goodness or the idea of 
the good, ideal beauty or the idea of the beautiful, are eternal 
realities. Ideas alone, therefore, contain true being, or essence. 
They are the archetypes of which individual existences are 
imperfect copies. Matter and mind alike have only a sec- 
ondary reality in so far as they participate in the ideas. The 



THE ESSENCE OF THINGS 13 

Platonic ideas, although developed from the Socratic con- 
cepts, evolve in the course of Plato's speculations into meta- 
physical existences, independent of the thinking mind. 

Aristotle cannot accept as true the idealism of Plato, 
because it fails to account adequately for the phenomenal 
world. His aim, like that of Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and 
the Atomists is so to conceive of being that becoming may be 
derived from it. This he accomplishes by a theory of devel- 
opment. Aristotle, like Plato, regards philosophy as the 
science of concepts, and finds the highest reality in forms or 
universals. But he does not underrate the value of individual 
existence. Although forms or ideas are conceived as the essence 
of things, they do not, in his view, exist apart from matter. 
Matter and form are inseparable, the true reality being the 
essence as unfolded in the phenomena. " Matter, the capacity, 
is molded into shape by form, the energy." 1 Becoming is the 
process through which matter, by taking on form, passes from 
mere potentiality to actuality. Everything in the universe is, 
accordingly, considered as both form and matter — form in 
relation to an existence lower in the scale of development, and 
matter in relation to something higher. 

The Stoics, Epicureans, and Skeptics offer no new contri- 
bution to the conception of essence. In all these systems the 
emphasis is placed upon practical interests. The Stoic ethics 
demands that the world be conceived as the work of reason, 
and yet the Stoics regard all substances as bodies, including 
even the Universal Reason. The Epicureans adopt, with some 
modification, the doctrine of Democritus, which best meets the 
demands of their individualistic ethics, while the Skeptics look 
for repose of mind through suspense of judgment regarding 
the ultimate principles of things. 

This brief review of the most significant of Greek theories 
concerning the essence of things prepares us for the establish- 
ment of such parallels as can be drawn between Greek and 
modern speculation. 

To the early Ionians we are indebted chiefly for the attempt 

i Aristotle, Metaphysics, Bk. VII, ch. II, § 3. 



14 THE ESSENCE OE THINGS 

to reduce to some kind of unity the plurality observable in 
phenomena. Their notions of a physical substratum, though 
primitive, approach in principle the conceptions of our modern 
physicists. 

The Pythagorean view of essence as number survives in 
modern philosophy in a tendency to consider the universe as 
quantitatively determined or to approach the questions of 
metaphysics with a mathematical equipment. With Kepler 
and Galileo, as with Pythagoras, it is the impression of order, 
harmony, and unity in nature which leads to the conception 
of the world as a system mathematically determined, although 
from the philosophy of these later thinkers the symbolism and 
mysticism of Pythagoreanism is entirely absent. Kepler 
declares that true knowledge exists only where quantities are 
cognizable, and that quantitative relations form the innermost 
essence of reality. He asserts, further, that our inclinations 
and aversions are dependent on an instinctive perception of 
proportions. Galileo believes that knowledge is possible only 
in relation to measurable objects, and that motion is the 
essential condition of matter. Hobbes, also, who defines phi- 
losophy as the reasoned knowledge of effects from causes and 
causes from effects, regards correct thinking as a mere com- 
bination and separation of conceptions, and knowledge as an 
addition of sensations. In his view all thought is simply cal- 
culation, and mathematics is the only road to science. All 
that exists is body, and all that occurs (psychical events 
included) some form of motion. It is his predilection for the 
mathematical method that leads Hobbes to his conception of 
essence as corporeal motion, to his mechanical and thorough- 
going materialistic view of the universe. So it is Descartes' 
endeavor to make metaphysics a science as exact as mathe- 
matics that leads him to seek for some indubitable first prin- 
ciple, self-evident as the axioms of geometry; while Spinoza 
places so great an emphasis on mathematics that he attempts 
to set forth his whole system of philosophy and ethics in the 
form of geometrical propositions. All our modern physicists, 
also, in so far as they adopt a philosophy, display a tendency 






THE ESSENCE OF THINGS 15 

to explain the universe as determined by purely quantitative 
relations. 

A philosophic demand for unity similar to that which 
induces Parmenides to reduce all thought and nature to one 
unchangeable and indivisible being, leads Spinoza to transcend 
the dualism of Descartes by postulating one single substance 
in the universe which manifests itself to us in the two attri- 
butes of extension and consciousness. The same demand for 
unity leads Spinoza, like Parmenides, to regard all change as 
an illusion of the senses, to adopt the rationalistic view that 
thought alone is capable of apprehending reality. A similar 
motive impels Fichte to seek to overcome the Kantian dual- 
ism of phenomena and noumena by regarding the world as the 
objectified ego and asserting the monism of the moral will. 
The endeavor to maintain a unity of nature and mind issues in 
Schelling in a system of identity which posits an absolute will 
as a neutral principle, the common ground of subject and 
object. In Hegel a similar philosophic need leads to the 
development of the panlogistic system, or system of absolute 
idealism, which recognizes reason as the unifying principle, 
manifesting itself in man as the essence of his thought and in 
nature as the law of its unfolding. 

But Hegel, like Heraclitus, and unlike Parmenides, views 
the process of change as an essential factor of reality. "As 
the first concrete thought term," says Hegel, "becoming 
is the first adequate vehicle of truth. In the history of phi- 
losophy, this stage of the logical idea finds its analogue in the 
system of Heraclitus. When Heraclitus says 'all is flowing 7 
(7ravra pet), he enunciates becoming as the fundamental feature 
of all existence, whereas the Eleatics saw the only truth in 
rigid, processless being." 1 

Like the atomic theories of the Greeks, modern atomism 
arises from an attempt to reconcile the principles of philosophy 
and science, from a desire to admit a permanent element in 
reality without denying the possibility of change. Among 
modern scientists there is general agreement that the reality 

1 Wallace, The Logic of Hegel, p. 168. 



16 THE ESSENCE OF THINGS 

is to be sought in ultimate, indivisible elements, unalterable 
in substance, and that through the changing relation of these 
elements the world of objects arises. But the particular 
nature of the elements is differently conceived in the various 
fields of science. In many respects, the closest approxima- 
tion to Greek atomism is the physicist's theory, which views 
the atoms as dynamical elements endowed with universal 
forces. 

Anaxagoras and the Atomists have also a certain affinity 
with Herbart. He himself describes his theory as qualitative 
atomism, since his unchangeable elements are distinguished 
by qualitative differences like the homoiomeriai of Anaxagoras, 
not by quantitative differentiation like the atoms of Democri- 
tus. Herbart's aim, like that of these earlier thinkers, is to 
free thought of the contradictions involved in the conception 
of change and of a manifold unity. To overcome these con- 
tradictions he posits a plurality of real beings, absolutely 
simple, inextended, and unchangeable, from the coming together 
of which arises the illusion of many qualities as existent in 
one thing. The activity of these "reals," as Herbart calls 
them, is directed toward self-preservation, that is, toward the 
protection of their simple quality from disturbances threatened 
by the opposing reals. All substances as perceived by us are 
merely accidental aspects of the reals (zufallige Ansichten der 
Realen). 

The theory of Anaxagoras that every substance contains 
in itself something of every element faintly suggests the 
doctrine of Leibniz, that every monad is a mirror of the uni- 
verse (un mirroir vivant perpdtuel de Vunivers 1 ) or represents 
the universe from its particular point of view; although 
Anaxagoras applies this conception to the composite element, 
and Leibniz to the simple monad. Leibniz's theory of monads 
is the result of a partial agreement with, and a partial oppo- 
sition to, the conceptions of both the Atomists and Descartes. 
With Descartes he agrees that substance must be independ- 
ent, and with the Atomists he maintains that all objects are 

1 Leibniz, La Monadologie, § 56. 



THE ESSENCE OF THINGS 17 

composed of a number of simple, indivisible, unchangeable 
units. But finding it impossible to conceive of any material 
unit as indivisible, he regards the monads as inextended, non- 
spatial substances, whose essence is not, like that of Descartes' 
substance, self-existence, but self-activity. The monads are 
conceived by Leibniz as forces, entelechies, or souls, 1 and are 
distinguished from one another only by the degree of clearness 
of their perceptions. They are entirely self -centered, receiv- 
ing no influence from without, and the interaction between 
souls and bodies (which Descartes so inconsistently maintains 
between substances regarded by him as absolutely independent) 
is not real, but a mere appearance. The illusion is due to the 
fact that the monads have, by a preestablished harmony insti- 
tuted by God, been determined to follow a course of inner 
development such that the changes in one monad correspond 
so completely with the changes in others as to give the 
impression of reciprocal interaction. 

Aristotle is suggested to us by the view of Leibniz "that 
essence is inseparable from existence, that whatever exists is 
by its very existence individual." 2 Indeed, the earlier phi- 
losophy of Leibniz holds unreservedly that "what Aristotle 
teaches concerning matter, form, position, nature, place, 
infinity, time, and motion, is, for the most part, immovably 
established." 2 Like Aristotle, also, Leibniz regards develop- 
ment as an essential factor of reality, but the detailed consid- 
eration of this point will be reserved for the section on 
Evolution. 

Plato's chief contact with modern idealism, as repre- 
sented by Berkeley, Fichte, Hegel, or Lotze, lies in his 
opposition to materialism, in his conception of reality as in- 
corporeality, and in his ascription of the highest reality to 
the idea. In conceiving of the ideas, however, as meta- 
physical existences, independent of thought, Plato pursued a 
direction of speculation which our modern idealistic thinkers 
have not followed. 

1 Leibniz, La Monadologie, § 19. 

2 Ueberweg, History of Philosophy, vol. II, p. 103. 



18 THE ESSENCE OF THINGS 

Such were the fruitful notions of the Greeks in regard to 
essence. Though their ideas were largely the result of pene- 
trating insight, rather than of reasoned arguments, yet the 
philosophers of Greece reached by their rapid leaps of intui- 
tion some of the vantage grounds of truth toward which modern 
thinkers have struggled by the slower stages of observation 
and logical procedure. 



II 

THE WOKLD GKOUND 

The predecessors of Xenophanes in the field of Greek phi- 
losophy, if we may judge from the extant fragments of their 
works, accepted, or at least did not openly reject, the gods of 
the popular mythology. Xenophanes is the first for whom the 
question of the ultimate ground of the world assumes philo- 
sophical importance. There is difference of opinion among 
authorities as to whether he developed his idea of God from 
the philosophical conception of the unity of all being, or 
whether his dominant motive was theological and simply led 
the way to the philosophical monism of the later Eleatics. 
The starting point of Xenophanes, so far as revealed to us in 
the surviving fragments of his works, is a vigorous protest 
against the anthropomorphic polytheism of the Greeks. " God 
is one," he tells us, "supreme among gods and men, and not 
like mortals in body or in mind. But mortals suppose that 
the gods are born (as they themselves are), and that they 
wear men's clothing and have human voice and body. The 
whole of God sees, the whole perceives, the whole hears. 
Without effort he sets in motion all things by mind and 
thought." 1 These fragments embody the first expression of 
Greek monotheism in our tradition; but if we are to accept 
the testimony of antiquity which ascribes to Xenophanes, in 
addition to these thoughts, the doctrine that the all is One, 
and the One is God, then we must recognize in him, further, 
the first representative of the pantheistic theology. 

This pantheistic tendency becomes more marked in Hera- 
clitus, whose views of essence and of Deity coincide in the 

1 Mullach, Fragmenta Philosophorum Graecorum, vol. I, p. 101. 

19 



20 THE WORLD GROUND 

notion that becoming, or the cosmic process, is the ground of 
all things and the sole reality. " All things are one, " x he tells 
us. "This world, the same for all, neither any of the gods 
nor any man has made, but it always was and is and shall be, 
an ever-living fire." 2 "God is day and night, winter and 
summer, war and peace, plenty and want; but he assumes 
different forms, and every one gives him the name he pleases." 3 

With Anaxagoras we reach the conception that the control- 
ling power in the world is vovs, or mind. We have already ob- 
served how the impulse to acknowledge the permanence of being 
without denying the reality of change leads Anaxagoras to the 
theory of the homoiomeriai and their changing relations. But 
he finds it necessary to posit further some principle of motion, 
which shall account for the order and design so manifest in 
nature ; and, judging from the analogy of the human intellect, 
he concludes that the moving and ordering principle of the 
world must be conceived as Mind. This divine Mind brought 
order out of the original chaos, and fashioned all things with 
a view to the ends they were destined to serve. Nevertheless, 
the vovs is regarded by Anaxagoras as a thought substance, 
and there is no evidence to show that he conceived it as a self- 
conscious personality. "The truth probably is," says Zeller, 
" that Anaxagoras defined indeed his conception of vovs accord- 
ing to the analogy of the human mind; and in attributing 
thought to it ascribed to it a predicate which strictly belongs 
only to a personal being, but that he never consciously pro- 
posed to himself the question of its personality, and, in conse- 
quence, combined with these personal conceptions others which 
were taken from the analogy of impersonal forces and sub- 
stances. . . . His spirit, in spite of its distinction in princi- 
ple from the corporeal, is also conceived as a force of nature, 
and under such conditions as could apply neither to a personal 
nor to a purely spiritual nature." 4 

Plato explains the universe solely from the teleological 

1 Bywater, Ileracliti Ephesii Reliquiae, Frag. I. 

2 Ibid., Frag. XX. « Ibid., Frag. XXXVI. 
4 Zeller, Greek Philosophy to the Time of Socrates, vol. II, pp. 348, 349. 



THE WORLD GROUND 21 

standpoint. Everything in the world exists as it does because 
it is best that it should so exist; all things are formed with a 
view to the idea of the good. But as the ideas are the sole 
realities, and the idea of the good is the highest of all, this 
view assumes a metaphysical significance in the conception 
that the Idea of the Good is the ground of all being; not the 
creator, but the final end of all phenomena. Thus the Idea of 
the Good becomes identified with the world-forming Reason, 
or with God, viewed both as the highest in the chain of ideas 
and the cause of all the other ideas. "The world," says 
Plato, " and all the animals and plants which grow upon the 
earth from seeds and roots, and all inanimate substances which 
form within the earth, are created by Divine Reason. 1 . . . 
The universe is governed by a marvelous intellect and wis- 
dom. 2 ... In God is no unrighteousness at all — he is alto- 
gether righteous, and there is nothing more like him than he 
is of us who is the most righteous." 3 A hasty interpretation 
of these passages might lead us to conceive of Plato's God as 
a self-conscious personality, but the conclusion would scarcely 
be justified by the premises. For whatever metaphysical 
reality Plato may have attached to the ideas, it is difficult to 
believe that he conceived of them as conscious of themselves. 
It is probable that by Plato, as by Anaxagoras, the personality 
of God was neither affirmed nor denied, for the reason that 
the question never presented itself to his mind as a problem 
requiring solution. 

The philosophy of Aristotle, which emphasizes the rela- 
tion of form and matter, the individual and the universal, the 
moving and the moved, demands an immovable first principle 
as the source of all movement. Hence he conceives of the 
Deity as a first Mover, himself unmoved, an eternal, imma- 
terial Form, a pure Actuality, a Being absolutely perfect. 
" There exists a certain immovable substance which possesses 
a subsistence separable from sensibles. It is devoid of parts 
and infinite. 4 . . . That the final cause exists in things that 

1 Plato, Sophist, 265. 3 Theaetetus, 176. 

2 Philebus, 28. * Aristotle, Metaphysics, Bk. XI, ch. XII, § 8. 



22 THE WORLD GEOUND 

are immovable is manifest. That which first imparts motion 
does so as a thing that is loved, and that which has motion 
impressed on it imparts motion to other things. 1 ... It is 
evident that that which understands is most divine and most 
entitled to reverence, and that it undergoes no change. We 
may assume that mind is cognizant of its own operations, if 
it really is that which is most superior and if perception 
amounts to the perception of a perception. The act of per- 
ception by the Mind is identical with the object of perception, 
and the first and actual perception by Mind of mind itself sub- 
sists throughout all eternity." 2 In this view of God as a 
spirit, whose sole object is his own thought, the thought of 
thought, Aristotle has reached the conception of the Deity as 
a self-conscious personality. Yet Aristotle's God is not a 
creator of the world in the usual acceptation of the term. He 
is a transcendent Spirit, standing in no active relation with 
man or with the world. He acts upon matter not in a mechani- 
cal way, but through the natural longing of matter after God. 
He is the final cause of the universe, but not its direct creator 
by any act of will. 

All departments of philosophy are approached by the 
Stoics from the direction of ethics, their prime object being 
to make men free and independent of externals by teaching 
them to live a virtuous life, in other words, a life according 
to reason. But the dualism of Plato or of Aristotle, which 
places the sensuous world in opposition to the ideas, or matter 
in opposition to form, seems to them incompatible with their 
demand for the universal reign of reason. Seeking, therefore, 
for a unifying principle which shall satisfactorily cancel the 
apparent opposition, they reach the pantheistic conception of 
the unity of the universe with its final cause or ground. " God 
is spoken of as being Fire, Ether, Air, most commonly as being 
7TV€vfj.a, or Atmospheric-Current, pervading everything without 
exception, what is most base and ugly, as well as what is 
most beautiful. He is further described as the Soul, the Mind, 

i Aristotle, Metaphysics, Bk. XI, ch. VII, § 3. 
2 Ibid., Bk. XI, ch. IX, §§ 2-f>. 



THE WORLD GROUND 23 

or the Eeason of the world; as a united whole containing in 
himself the germ of all things; as the connecting element in 
all things; as Universal Law, Nature, Destiny, Providence; 
as a perfect, happy, ever-kind, and all-knowing Being." 1 
From the variety of epithets used to describe God, we perceive 
that the Stoic conception of Deity involves a combination of 
materialistic and spiritualistic ideas. Paradoxical as it may 
appear to designate God in one statement as Air, Fire, Nature, 
and in another as Soul, Law, Destiny, or Providence, the two 
views are united by the Stoics in their fundamental idea of the 
universe as a harmonious and all-embracing unity. 

The Epicureans look upon the world as a mechanism, and 
desire to know no more about its workings than appears to be 
essential for their happiness. Although Epicurus himself did 
not wholly renounce belief in the gods of the popular faith, 
the Epicurean philosophy has an avowed atheistical tendency, 
its aim being to free the mind from fear by denying the exist- 
ence of supernatural causes. Lucretius, in his poetical expo- 
sition of Epicureanism, states emphatically that "the nature 
of the world has by no means been made for us by a divine 
power." 2 

The aim of Skepticism, like that of Stoicism and Epicure- 
anism, is mainly practical. The Skeptics seek happiness by 
way of tranquillity, and tranquillity through suspense of judg- 
ment. To justify this attitude they point out the contradic- 
tions involved in all the rival systems of philosophy. Among 
other criticisms they offer arguments to overthrow the ordinary 
conceptions of God, especially those of the Stoics. They point 
to the evil existent in the world as opposed to the theory of 
Design or Providence, and they call attention to contradictions 
in many of the accepted views of the Deity. If God is con- 
ceived as a separate, individual Being, they say, he cannot be 
regarded as infinite. If he is a living Being, he must be sus- 
ceptible of change and subject to death. Since virtue consists 
in overcoming one's own imperfections, God cannot be both 

1 Zeller, Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics, pp. 148-150. 

2 Lucretius, Be Rerum Natura, Bk. II, 180. 



24 THE WORLD GROUND 

virtuous and perfect. If capable of receiving pleasure, he 
cannot be impervious to pain. Further difficulties appear in 
attempting to conceive of God as either limited or unlimited, 
the limited being incomplete and the unlimited immovable. 
The nature of God cannot therefore be expressed by any of the 
attributes commonly ascribed to him. The Skeptics do not 
deny the possibility of the existence of a being higher than 
man, but they refuse to grant that there must necessarily be a 
God conceived as a rational Being. 

The motive of the Neoplatonic speculation proceeds from 
the Platonic view of the dualism and opposition of spirit and 
matter conceived as an antithesis of good and evil. Matter, 
as completely destitute of form and idea being regarded as the 
cause of all evil, the Neoplatonists wish to place God entirely 
beyond its sphere. Yet while they thus insist on the tran- 
scendency of God above the world, they wish, at the same 
time, like the Stoics, to view the world as a unity. From the 
union of these two motives comes the conception of the world 
as a continuous whole proceeding from and returning to God 
in a manner analogous to the emanation of light from the sun. 
As opposed to the many, the original Being is the One, as 
opposed to the finite, the Infinite; but it is impossible to 
attribute to him any definite characterization. God is exalted 
even above the ideas, which are emanations from the Deity, 
as the soul is an emanation from the ideas and the phenomenal 
world an emanation from the soul. Kegarding all attributes 
as limitations of perfection, the Neoplatonists refuse to describe 
God by qualities of any kind, whether spiritual or material. 
God is not conscious, but transcends both the conscious and 
the unconscious; although the source of all intelligence and 
goodness, he himself is neither intelligent^ nor good. Think- 
ing or willing cannot be exercised by God without being directed 
to some object beyond himself; but the assumption of such an 
object would detract from the absolutism of God. As superior 
to all ideas, he transcends all conceptions. As the one which 
precedes all things he is nothing, but as the source of all things 
he is everything. Notwithstanding the transcendence of God, 



THE WORLD GROUND 25 

however, man's purest longing is directed toward a reunion 
with him. This becomes possible by an elevation above the 
life of the senses and a constant contemplation of the primeval 
Being, which results in the state of blessedness known as 
ecstasy. 

This outline of the Neoplatonic system completes our sur- 
vey of Greek theories of the ground of the world, the enduring 
elements of which we shall now proceed to distinguish. 

Speaking of the origin of the universe, Herbert Spencer 
states that three suppositions are possible. We may assert 
that it is created by an external agency — the theistic view ; 
that it is self -existent — the pantheistic view; or that it is 
self-created — the atheistic view. All these views are repre- 
sented in the philosophy of the Greeks. The systems of 
Anaxagoras, Plato, and Aristotle are, to a greater or less 
extent, theistic; the views of Xenophanes, Heraclitus, the 
Stoics, and the Neoplatonists have pantheistic leanings ; while 
the doctrines of the Epicureans and the Skeptics reveal an 
atheistic tendency. 

Many of the characteristic attributes of the Deity, as 
represented by later philosophers, are developed in these early 
speculations. We find, on the one hand, conceptions of his 
infinity and eternity, of his goodness, intelligence, and power; 
on the other hand, the idea of God as an indefinable reality, 
devoid of all attributes, even of intelligence and will. 

Just as the teleological view of the universe leads Anax- 
agoras to the idea of the cause of all as vo9s, impels Plato to 
identify God with the Idea of the Good as the final cause of 
all becoming, and leads Aristotle to conceive of him as pure 
Form or Thought toward which all things, by their very nature, 
are compelled to strive, so Leibniz argues teleologically from 
the harmony subsisting among the non-interacting monads to 
God as the only possible source of such harmony. This dif- 
ference, however, is to be noted — that whereas the God of 
Leibniz preimposes the ends upon the monads he creates, and 
preestablishes the harmony that exists among them, the God 
of Plato or of Aristotle is not a creator of the world in the 



26 THE WORLD GROUND 

mechanical sense, but all nature strives of necessity toward 
the Idea of the Good or toward pure Form as its final goal. 
The teleological view of the universe is also a prominent ele- 
ment in the earlier philosophy of Kant, although in the Critique 
of Pure Eeason he devotes a chapter to the exposition of the 
invalidity of the physico-theological proof, as he calls it, of 
the existence of God. He shows that "the physico-theologi- 
cal proof rests on the cosmological, and the cosmological on 
the ontological proof of the existence of one original Being as 
the Supreme Being; and as, besides these three, there is no 
other path open to speculative reason, the ontological proof, 
based exclusively on pure concepts of reason, is the only pos- 
sible one, always supposing that any proof of a proposition, so 
far transcending the empirical use of the reason, is possible at 
all." 1 Kant, therefore, derives his proof of the existence of 
God entirely from the postulates of the practical reason. 

The inconsistency in Plato's conception of the Idea of the 
Good, as both the highest in the series of ideas and the cause 
of all the others, is met again in Leibniz's view of God as the 
Monad of monads, the highest in the series and the source of 
all the lesser monads. 

Many thoughts analogous to Greek conceptions are present 
in the system of Spinoza. The starting point of his philoso- 
phy is his conception of Substance as "that which exists in 
itself and is conceived by itself; that which does not need the 
conception of any other thing in order to be conceived." 2 This 
is essentially like the Cartesian definition of substance, but 
Spinoza draws from it the logical conclusion, which Descartes 
failed to derive, that finite things are not substances, and that 
the sole Substance is God. Spinoza's God is endowed with 
infinite attributes (" what the intellect perceives as constituting 
the essence of Substance " 8 ) ; but of these only two, extension 
and consciousness, are manifested to us. Finite things are 
merely modes of God's attributes. God therefore exists in 

1 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 507. 

2 Spinoza, Ethics, Part I, Def. III. 
8 Ibid., Part I, Def. IV. 



THE WORLD GROUND 27 

finite things as their essence, and they exist in him as modes. 
God and nature are, in brief, identical. As the universal 
essence of things God is natara ?iaturans, but as the totality 
of his modes he is natura naturata. In this pantheistic view 
of the universe (to which Spinoza, like the Eleatics, is led by 
a desire to represent all reality as a unity) he agrees with Xen- 
ophanes, Heraclitus, and the Stoics. But the Stoic conception 
of God as a Providence or Reason, which creates the universe 
with a view to ends, Spinoza rejects. In this particular he is 
in agreement rather with the Epicureans, that it is absurd to 
speak of ends with relation to the Deity. Spinoza's disbelief 
in teleology is partly the result of his mathematical view 
of metaphysics, since mathematics knows no ends, but only 
grounds and consequences, and partly the outcome of his defi- 
nition of Substance, which forbids it to be conditioned by any 
ends outside itself. We remember that this idea, that objective 
ends would be limitations of God's perfection, leads Aristotle 
to deny the creative activity of God, to declare that God's 
thought can be his only object, and that his relation to the 
world is that of a transcendent Being. Spinoza, however, 
tries to reconcile this view with the immanence of God. He 
succeeds only in evading the difficulty by his mathematical 
conception that the world follows from the nature of God with 
the same necessity as it follows from the nature of a triangle 
that the sum of its three angles is equal to two right angles. 
God is merely the logical ground from which existence fol- 
lows as a necessary consequence. Spinoza's closest alliance, 
however, is with the Neoplatonists. Like them, he feels 
that the ascription of attributes to the Deity would destroy 
his unity and infinity since omnis determinatio est negatio. 
That Spinoza, notwithstanding this assertion, ascribes to God 
an infinite number of attributes is an inconsistency which 
some philosophers try to explain away by interpreting the 
attributes as merely human methods of conceiving God, not as 
expressions of his essential nature. But this would bring back 
the dualism of extension and consciousness, of the finite and 
the infinite, which Spinoza aimed to overcome, and would 



28 THE WORLD GROUND 

leave no place in his system for the immanence of God. The 
truth is, that this doctrine of immanence is irreconcilable with 
that of indeterminateness, and leads of necessity to confusion 
of thought. Although Spinoza asserts that man has an ade- 
quate knowledge of God in the two attributes of extension and 
consciousness, it is difficult to conceive how this knowledge 
can be more adequate than that of Spencer's "Unknowable 
Reality," since Spinoza insists that God has neither intelli- 
gence nor will, in the human sense of the term, nor any other 
attribute. Spinoza's Infinite, like that of the Neoplatonists, 
becomes, through the denial of all qualities, a pure abstrac- 
tion, a form without content, totally lacking in any moving 
principle from which the world can be derived. That this 
empty form is, nevertheless, for Spinoza an object of love, 
and that he holds man's highest happiness to consist in love 
of God, is another inconsistency which he shares with the 
Neoplatonists. Erdmann tries to explain it by translating 
love of God into love of truth, " since everything is known in 
its necessity only if it is known as a necessary consequence of 
the Infinite Divine Being. . . . God, then, does not love us, 
but we love him if we have knowledge." * 

Schelling bears the same relation to the Greeks as does 
Spinoza, in so far as in his pantheistic system of iden- 
tity he adopts Spinoza's, view that mind and nature have 
a common basis in the Absolute, which itself, however, is 
neither mind nor body, but an essence indeterminate in con- 
tent, an indifference of object and subject, of the real and 
the ideal. 

Both Platonic and Stoic elements may be detected in 
Hegel's view of the Absolute as the Idea, and of the content 
of the Absolute Idea as the whole system. His assertion that 
the infinite, if beyond the finite, must by this very limitation 
cease to be infinite reechoes one of the Skeptical tropes; but 
Hegel solves the difficulty by declaring that "the infinite is 
the essence of the finite, and the finite is the manifestation of 
the infinite. Infinity determines itself, limits itself, sets 

i Erdmann, History of Philosophy , vol. II, p. 86. 



THE WORLD GROUND 29 

boundaries to itself; in a word, it becomes the finite by the 
very fact that it gives itself existence." 1 

With few exceptions, the various systems of philosophy, 
ancient and modern, have shown a tendency to represent the 
ground of the world by the highest or most absolute principles 
that their theories afforded. Differences in conceptions of this 
ground are due to various motives which have played their 
part in the past, as they do in the present, in influencing the 
special determinations. Modern philosophy, taken as a whole, 
shows a disposition toward a keener analysis and toward a 
checking of extravagant fancies by a study of the limitations 
of human knowledge ; but ever since the time of Kant there 
has also been manifest a tendency to grant to the practical 
reason a voice in the final decision. Whatever may be the out- 
come, it is reducible to one of the three general views of the 
ground of the universe expounded by the philosophers of 
Greece. Materialism and idealism, empiricism and rational- 
ism alike have their theistic, their pantheistic, and their 
atheistic representatives, each of whom tries to bring to the 
support of his arguments for his conception of the World 
Ground the full weight of his particular system of philosophy. 

1 Weber, History of Philosophy, pp. 503, 504. 



Ill 



SPACE AND TIME 



The question of the nature of space and time constitutes 
for modern metaphysics a vital problem, affecting as it does 
our view of the reality of the external world. In attempting 
to institute comparisons on this subject between the old philoso- 
phy and the new, it may be well to state at the outset that 
any conscious expression of the subjectivity of space and time 
as expounded by Kant or developed by Lotze was foreign to 
Greek thought. The speculations of the Greeks were largely 
confined to debates concerning the finitude or infinity of space 
and time; and yet we shall see that they did not altogether 
ignore the problem of the metaphysical nature of these cate- 
gories, nor were they wholly blind to the difficulties involved. 

The first idea of space among the Physicists was that of 
a void, empty of matter. The confidence in such a principle 
as contrasted with the " full " (to irXiov) remained unshaken 
until the notion was challenged by the Eleatics. 

The emphatic assertion of Parmenides that only being 
exists, and that non-being is inconceivable, coupled with his 
identification of non-being with the void, proves, in effect, a 
denial of the reality of space as by him conceived ; but we must 
observe that it is the non-existence of empty space alone toward 
which the arguments of Parmenides are directed. 

His disciple, Zeno, comes nearer the appreciation of the real 
problem, and wrestles with it in one of its modern aspects. " If 
there is such a thing as place," he says, " it will be in something, 
for all being is in something, and that which is in something is 
in some place. Then this place will be in a place, and so on 
indefinitely. Accordingly, there is no such thing as place." 1 

1 Fairbanks, First Philosophers of Greece, p. 116. 
30 



SPACE AND TIME 31 

Space, according to Plato, is not a condition of reality, 
that is, of the idea, but is that in which all things appear, 
grow up, and decay. Plato represents time as a mere shadow 
or image of eternity. " The past and future are created species 
of time which we unconsciously, but wrongly transfer to the 
eternal essence. . . . When we say that what has become has 
become, and what is becoming is becoming, and that what will 
become will become, and that what is not is not, — all these are 
inaccurate modes of expression." 1 Time, therefore, and all 
things that appear in time are unreal. The unreality of time 
follows from the sole reality of the timeless idea. 

Aristotle finds the solution of the problem presented by 
Zeno in a new conception of space as a state or property of 
things. "It is not difficult," he says, "to solve Zeno's prob- 
lem that if space is anything it will be in some place, for 
nothing hinders the first place from being in something else, 
just as health exists in warm beings as a state, while warmth 
exists in matter as a property of it. So it is not necessary to 
assume an indefinite series of spaces." 2 Elsewhere Aristotle 
declares that " space is neither form nor matter nor limit, but 
the boundary of the containing body." 3 Both space and time 
are infinite. Time is implicit in motion, but cannot in reality 
exist without a soul, since number does not exist without a 
calculator, and the sole calculator is reason. Apart from the 
soul, therefore, time cannot exist, but only that which consti- 
tutes the essence of time — the reality which lies beneath it 
as a substratum of its existence. 

The Epicureans maintain that space exists from eternity, 
as a precondition of all motion, but that the sense of time 
comes from what is done in time. " Time exists not by itself, 
but simply from things which happen, the sense apprehends 
what has been done in time past as well as what is present and 
what is to follow after. No one feels time by itself abstracted 
from the motion and calm rest of things." 4 

i Plato, Timaeus, 38. * Aristotle, Physics, Bk. IV, ch. V. 

s Aristotle, Physics, Bk. IV, ch. VI. 

4 Lucretius, Be Rerum Natura, Bk. I, 462. 



32 SPACE AND TIME 

When Berkeley defines space as the experience in unre- 
sisted organic movements, and time as the apprehension of 
changes in our ideas ; when Leibniz asserts that space and time 
are not real substances nor attributes thereof, but orders of 
coexistences and succession of things and phenomena; when 
Kant, arguing for the transcendental ideality of space and 
time, insists that they are no more than the subjective con- 
ditions of our sensibility and intuition, space being the form 
of all the phenomena of the external senses and time the 
form of the internal sense; when Lotze represents space as 
the " intellectual " relations of things which we translate into 
spatial language, and regards time not only as a subjective 
form of apprehension, but also as an unaccountable constitu- 
ent of the real, — although these modern philosophers differ 
in the kind of reality they accord to space and time, they 
agree among themselves, and with Zeno, Plato, Aristotle, and 
Lucretius, in just this point that they refuse to admit that 
space or time possesses any substantial reality. 

Zeno's argument against the reality of space recurs in 
many of the modern expositions of the contradictions involved 
in the ordinary conceptions. "The common notion," says 
Bowne, "of an independent space is repugnant to creation, 
for the necessity would ever pursue us of positing a previous 
space for the reception of the created one." x 

Although it should not be too strongly urged, the parallel- 
ism might be drawn between Aristotle and Kant that just as 
the former in one sense asserts the reality of time, and yet 
denies that it can exist apart from the soul, so Kant empha- 
sizes the thought that the transcendental ideality of space and 
time detracts in no measure from their empirical reality. 

The conclusion to be drawn from this comparison of the 
conceptions of space and time as developed in ancient and 
modern philosophy is that the Greeks, though not themselves 
sufficiently sure-footed to venture on the path that lay before 
them, were able at least to point out the road along which 
modern speculation is traveling. 

1 Bowne, Metaphysics, p. 131. 



IV 
CONCEPTIONS OF EVOLUTION 

To cover the many conflicting systems of philosophy that 
lay claim to the title of evolution, it is necessary to use the 
term in its broadest sense. Evolution thus broadly defined 
includes all theories of the universe that view it as the result 
of a gradual development of indeterminate, simple, lower forms 
into determinate, complex, higher forms, through the opera- 
tion of causes immanent in the world. Thus considering 
evolution as a theory of development, it is the object of the 
present discussion to discover how far the modern evolutionary 
hypotheses were anticipated by the speculations of the Greeks. 

The first step toward the conception of development was 
taken by the early physicists — Thales, Anaximander, and 
Anaximenes — in their effort to explain the world as generated 
out of a primordial substance. Anaximander' s theory more 
specifically foreshadows later speculation in that it traces the 
origin of all determinate existence from an indeterminate infi- 
nite element, to airapov. The first principle of Anaximander, 
like that of Thales and Anaximenes, is without beginning, 
and indestructible. Anaximander interests us also by his 
attempt to explain the origin of man. " Man, " he tells us in 
one passage, " came into being from another animal, the fish; " l 
but elsewhere he says that " at the beginning man was generated 
from all sorts of animals, since all the rest can quickly get food 
for themselves, while man alone requires feeding for a long 
time." 2 Anaximander further declares that "destruction and 
far earlier generation have taken place since an indefinite time, 
as all things are involved in a cycle." 3 

1 Fairbanks, First Philosophers of Greece, p. 13. 
2 /&«?., p. 14. 3/6id.,p. 14. 

d 33 



34 CONCEPTIONS OF EVOLUTION 

Besides emphasizing the fixed law of change, Heraclitus 
reiterates Anaximander's assertion of a continuous alternation 
of generation and destruction. " Life and death, waking and 
sleeping, youth and old age, are the same ; for the latter change 
and are the former, and the former change back to the latter." * 
In his doctrine of strife as the process of evolution, Heraclitus 
voices a still more pregnant thought. "Heraclitus blamed 
Homer for saying 'would that strife might perish from among 
gods and men. For then,' said he, 'all things would pass 
away. ' " 2 " All things are made by strife " {-n-avra Kar' tpw 
yiVeo-0cu). 8 

Empedocles, as we have observed before, teaches that all 
things arise from the combination and separation of four primi- 
tive elements through the operation of the forces of love and 
hate. " There is no origination of anything that is mortal, nor 
yet any end in baneful death, but only mixture and separation. 
It is impossible that being should perish completely." 4 This 
statement repeats Anaximander's idea of the indestructibility 
and eternity of being. In the beginning there existed a com- 
pact mass in which love reigned supreme ; but by the develop- 
ment of the disruptive force — hate — the elements separated 
and individual things arose. Whenever the force of separation 
domiuates, individual things disappear. Thus we have alter- 
nate periods of growth and decay. According to Empedocles, 
organisms arose from formless lumps of earth and water, 
which shaped themselves into animal or human organs and 
members. The heads which at first "grew up without necks," 
the arms which "wandered about naked, bereft of shoulders," 
and the eyes which "roamed about alone with no foreheads," 5 
came together by chance, and those that were adapted for union 
shaped themselves into living organisms. A countless number 
of combinations perished, while only those persisted which 
were by nature capable of surviving and of propagating them- 

1 Bywater, Heracliti Ephesii Reliquiae, Frag. LXXVIII. 

2 Fairbanks, First Philosophers of Greece, p. 35. 

8 Bywater, Heracliti Ephesii Reliquiae, Frag. XL VI. 
4 Fairbanks, First Philosophers of Greece, p. 1G3. 
e Ibid., p. 189. 



CONCEPTIONS OE EVOLUTION 35 

selves. Plants arose first, then animals, the higher forms of 
life being compelled to pass through stages of the lower. 
"Before this," says Empedocles, "I was born once a boy and 
a maiden and a plant and a darting fish in the sea." 1 

The only fruitful idea added by Anaxagoras to Empedo- 
cles' principles of development is the theory that the homoio- 
meriai, which were originally commingled in a chaotic mass, 
were, after separation by the vovs, remingled according to inner 
affinities. 

The theory of Leucippus and Democritus, which explains 
all development as a combination of atoms through an inher- 
ent force acting by necessity according to a universal law, con- 
tains the fundamental principle of all mechanical systems of 
cosmic evolution. 

The philosophy of Plato, which is concerned more with 
being than with becoming, leaves no legacy to the doctrine of 
evolution beyond the thought that the human race arose in the 
universe in ages infinitely remote. Influenced, no doubt, by 
his teleological view that all things have their purposes outside 
themselves in something better, Plato reverses the order of 
organic development in the assertion that the most perfect of 
animals — man — was first created, and that birds and beasts 
and fishes are transformations of light-minded or degenerate 
men. 2 

To Aristotle nature appears as a scale of progressive 
development toward perfection, from lifeless matter through 
the various stages of life up to man. He rejects the fortuitous 
combinations of Empedocles in favor of the teleological concep- 
tion that nature produces first those organs that are necessary 
for the support of life. 

The Stoics accept from Anaximander and Empedocles the 
idea of successive periods of development and destruction of 
the universe, while the Epicureans reiterate the notion of for- 
tuitous beginnings. Lucretius, like Empedocles, speaks of 
the extinction of innumerable tribes unable to transmit life to 

1 Fairbanks, First Philosophers of Greece, p. 207. 

2 Plato, Timaeus, 42, 91, and 92. 



36 CONCEPTIONS OF EVOLUTION 

their offspring. He further traces the evolution of man from 
an original state of beastlike savagery, the development of 
language from the sounds of animals, of music from the sounds 
in nature, and of religion from ideas presented in dreams and 
in hallucinations. 

Affinities between many of these Greek conceptions and 
the evolutionary hypotheses of the present are no less remark- 
able than they are manifest. 

Anax inlander's theory of the generation of all determinate 
forms of existence from an indeterminate element foreshadows 
vaguely Spencer's idea of progress from "an indefinite, inco- 
herent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity." 
Further, Anaximander resembles Spencer in his theory of the 
alternation of development and destruction. " Apparently, " 
says Spencer, "the universally coexistent forces of attraction 
and repulsion, which necessitate rhythm in all minor changes 
throughout the universe, also necessitate rhythm in the totality 
of its changes, produce now an immeasurable period during 
which the attractive forces predominating cause universal con- 
centration, and then an immeasurable period during which the 
repulsive forces predominating cause universal diffusion — 
alternate eras of evolution and dissolution." 1 

In the Heraclitean conception of strife as a condition of 
development we may see at least a suggestion of the principle 
of struggle for existence — a principle which Darwin has shown 
to be so significant a factor in biological evolution. Heracli- 
tus' recognition of a fixed and universal law, according to 
which all change proceeds, also suggests a significant element 
of all the modern theories of evolution. 

Empedocles' forces of love and hate are but other names 
for Herbert Spencer's forces of attraction and repulsion. In 
the light of this interpretation, it will be fruitful to compare 
the theory of Spencer, quoted above, with the assertion of 
Empedocles that when hate predominates individual things 
disappear. Empedocles also recognizes the principle of "sur- 
vival of the fittest " amid the destruction of innumerable types, 

1 Spencer, First Principles, p. 537. 



CONCEPTIONS OF EVOLUTION 37 

and of adaptation to environment as an important condition of 
fitness to survive. 

The Anaxagorean principle of the mixture of the original 
elements according to inner affinities, is faintly suggestive of 
the Spencerian theory of "a gradually completed segregation 
of like units into a group distinctly separated from neighbor- 
ing groups, which are severally made up of other kinds of 
units." * 

The atomistic system of Leucippus and Democritus con- 
tains, as we have already observed, the foundation principle 
of all the purely mechanical theories of evolution. Among 
their most enduring thoughts is the idea of the universal reign 
of law, which has been emphasized before in connection with 
the philosophy of Heraclitus. 

Aristotle's view of nature as a scale of progressive devel- 
opment reminds us of Leibniz's theory, which regards the 
monads as arranged on a graduated scale of development toward 
perfection. But there is one great difference to be noted 
between these two philosophers. Aristotle's principle of 
development from potentiality to actuality involves the change 
of one thing into another, whereas in the system of Leibniz, 
although a process of evolution occurs within each monad, no 
monad ever develops into another. 

The special contribution of Lucretius, which consists in 
his many-sided application of the doctrine of evolution to 
language, music, and religious ideas, as well as to nature and 
man, is a further approximation to the philosophy of Herbert 
Spencer. 

Recapitulating the results of this comparison, we find 
represented in the philosophy of the Greeks the idea of a basal 
identity of all existence, of the indestructibility of matter, of 
a fixed law of change, of the gradual development of higher 
from lower forms, of the immeasurable antiquity of man, of 
the dependence of progress on a constant struggle for existence, 
adaptation to environment, and survival of the fittest. 

Yet, in spite of their significance as anticipations, the 

1 Spencer, First Principles, p. 459. 



38 CONCEPTIONS OF EVOLUTION 

Greek conceptions were but flashes of insight resting on an 
insecure foundation of experience, while modern evolutionary- 
theories are rooted in science and owe the enthusiasm of their 
supporters to the remarkable results achieved in the field of 
science by the painstaking researches of such men as Darwin, 
Wallace, and Lamarck. When, however, overstepping the 
limits of science, these modern theories present themselves as 
complete systems of philosophy, competent to solve all the 
problems which properly belong within the sphere of meta- 
physics, it is necessary to emphasize the fact that evolution 
explains nothing beyond the process or order of development. 
All that evolution gives rise to must be potentially present in 
some germ or element, concerning the origin of which natural 
science is unable to enlighten us. The development of things 
in accordance with certain fixed laws throws no light either on 
ultimate origins or on the underlying causality which deter- 
mines the law of evolution itself. Greek philosophy shows us 
evolutionary conceptions in the state -that Spencer character- 
izes as un-unified knowledge; modern investigations have 
advanced them to the partially unified knowledge of science; 
but not yet has any system of evolution formulated such uni- 
versal propositions as Spencer demands for the completely 
unified knowledge of philosophy. 



CONCEPTIONS OF CAUSALITY 

Aristotle arraigned all his predecessors with the charge of 
having imperfectly conceived the problem of causality. That 
such inadequate conceptions should occur in the early history 
of philosophy is by no means surprising. Eather would it 
have been cause for wonder had this subtle category been 
exhaustively interpreted in the infancy of speculative science. 

The question of change presents itself to the Ionians as a 
problem requiring solution, but when they have reduced all 
generation to its lowest terms, in a primary substance, the 
problem seems to them completely solved. By regarding the 
principle of life and motion as inherent in their fundamental 
element, they stifle inquiry as to any cause of change or motion. 
Their investigations are therefore directed solely toward the 
discovery of a material cause. 

Of the four causes enumerated by Aristotle as active in all 
phenomena, — the material cause, the formal cause, the effi- 
cient cause, and the final cause, — the second is for the first 
time recognized by the Pythagoreans in their view of number 
as the formal cause of things. 

Since it is experience of change that first impresses on the 
mind the causal relation, the Eleatics, who regard change as 
mere illusion, manifest, as might be expected, little interest 
in the question of causality. 

The efficient cause, or cause of motion, is introduced for 
the first time by Heraclitus, although Empedocles usually 
receives the credit of having originated this conception. The 
mobility of Heraclitus' primitive fire is indeed suggestive of 
hylozoismj but if we are to find any intelligible meaning in 

39 



40 CONCEPTIONS OF CAUSALITY 

the famous sayings of Heraclitus — " All things arise and pass 
away through strife/' 1 " War is the father of all," 2 we must 
admit that he recognizes struggle, or the war of opposites, as 
the efficient cause of generation. Heraclitus, also, for the 
first time gives utterance to the thought that all change is 
subject to a fixed, unalterable law. 

Empedocles, although not the originator of the idea of an 
efficient cause, deserves the credit of giving to the thought a 
more emphatic recognition in the development of his system. 
In addition to the four elements, — earth, water, air, and fire, 
— assumed as the material principles of things, he posits 
further as efficient causes a combining force — love — and a 
separating force — hate. The combinations and separations of 
the elements effectuated through the action of these two forces 
account for all the variety in experience. 

A further advance on previous conceptions is made by 
Anaxagoras in his reflection that vovs, or Mind, is the world- 
ordering cause, both the source of motion, and the final end of 
all becoming. By this conception Anaxagoras introduces the 
final cause, the last of the four enumerated by Aristotle. But 
both Plato and Aristotle justly reproach him for having dis- 
covered this fruitful principle without being able to apply it. 
"I rejoiced," says Plato, "to think that I had found in Anax- 
agoras a teacher of the causes of things such as I desired. 
How grievously was I disappointed! As I proceeded, I found 
my philosopher altogether forsaking mind or any other prin- 
ciple of order, but having recourse to air and ether and water 
and other eccentricities." 3 And Aristotle tells us that " Anax- 
agoras employs mind as a machine for the production of the 
orderly system of the world; and when he finds himself in 
perplexity as to the cause why a thing necessarily is, he then 
drags it in by force to his assistance; but, in the other instances, 
he assigns, as a cause of the things that are being produced, 
everything else in preference to mind." 4 

1 Bywater, Beracliti Ephesii Reliquiae, Frag. XLVI. 
a Tbid, t Frag. XLIV. 3 Plato, Phaedo, 97. 

* Aristotle, Metaphysics, Bk. I, ch. IV, § 4. 



CONCEPTIONS OF CAUSALITY 41 

Protagoras, who regards sensation as the source of all 
knowledge, finding that causes and ultimate principles are not 
discoverable through sense perception, concludes that they are 
inaccessible to knowledge. 

Democritus does not ask for a ca,use of the atoms them^ 
selves, since believing them eternal he regards them as 
uncaused; but the coming together of the atoms in space, 
which gives rise to the universe and all existence, he attributes 
to mechanical necessity. The elements of Empedocles are 
brought together by the external force of love, those of Anax- 
agoras are guided by a designing mind; but the atoms of 
Democritus, constrained only by an innate necessity, range 
themselves together in space under the principle of similarity 
in form and magnitude. Democritus, however, protests against 
chance as vehemently as he does against design. Although 
all things, including the human mind, are produced by the 
pressure and impact of atoms, they proceed according to law 
and are bound together in an eternally necessary chain of 
cause and effect. 

In Plato's teleological view of nature the ideas are regarded 
as the final causes of phenomena, the idea of the good — the 
highest of all — being at the same time the ultimate efficient 
cause and the final cause of all becoming. In addition to the 
ideas, however, there are secondary or "cooperative causes 
which God uses as his ministers, when executing the idea of 
the best, as far as possible. They are thought by most men 
not to be the second, but the prime causes of all things, which 
they cool and heat and contract and dilate, and the like ; but 
this is not true, for they are incapable of reason or intellect. 
The only being which can properly have mind is the soul, and 
this is invisible ; whereas fire and water and earth and air are 
all of them visible bodies. Both kinds of causes should be 
considered of us, but a separation should be made of those 
which are endowed with mind and are the workings of things 
fair and good, and those which are deprived of intelligence and 
accomplish their several works by chance and without order." x 

1 Plato, Timaeus, 46. 



42 CONCEPTIONS OF CAUSALITY 

Aristotle, like Plato, regards nature as an adaptation of 
means to ends, but he gives more prominence than Plato to 
mechanical conditions as intermediate efficient causes. He 
combines, in a measure, the teleological and mechanical views 
of becoming. Aristotle conceives the process of development 
both from the standpoint of man's constructive activity, or the 
world of art, and from the standpoint of the organic world. 
In the world of art he distinguishes four causes as contribut- 
ing to the production of any object: first, a material cause 
(r) vXrj), second, a formal cause (to elSos), third, an efficient, or 
moving cause (to klvtjtlkov), and fourth, a final cause (t6 reAos). 
Thus in the case of the production of a statue, the marble con- 
stitutes the material cause; the idea, or plan of the statue in 
the mind of the artist, the formal cause; arms, hands, tools, 
etc., the efficient, or moving cause; and the motive that actu- 
ates the artist, the final cause. The change effected by the 
cooperation of these four causes is a transition from matter, 
the statue in potentiality, to the actual formed statue. In the 
case of organic creation, however, these four causes are reduci- 
ble to two, matter and form, since the final and efficient causes 
are here identical with the formal cause. The form arouses 
matter to move toward it as an end. All organisms display an 
immanent, although unconscious purpose to develop into their 
proper form. The universe is viewed by Aristotle as an 
organic whole, moving from the lowest stage, matter, or mere 
potentiality, to its end, the highest form, pure actuality, or 
God. Yet, in spite of his teleological view of nature, Aristotle 
recognizes in the world of experience an accidental element, 
which cannot be assigned to purpose or reduced to law. This 
he attributes to the mechanical causes which inhere in matter 
and oppose a certain resistance to form. 

The Stoics regard the universe as a living, connected whole, 
and its manifold phenomena as particular forms of a unitary 
being. For Aristotle's formal and material causes they sub- 
stitute a passive principle, unqualified substance, and an active 
principle, the reason immanent in matter. But this active 
principle, reason, which is the moving force of the world, is 



CONCEPTIONS OF CAUSALITY 43 

in itself material. Although it is identical with the soul of 
the world, or God, it permeates all things as a material fire or 
breath (rrvevfjia) . This contradictory conception is due to two 
irreconcilable elements which enter into Stoic speculation. 
The Stoics adopt, on the one hand, the material view of the 
universe, which recognizes substantial matter as the sole 
reality; but, on the other hand, they perceive in nature an 
adaptation of means to ends, which they can ascribe only to a 
reasonable creator. God is therefore represented as a purpose- 
fully guiding Providence, but he is at the same time identified 
with Necessity or Destiny. The Stoics believe with Democri- 
tus that necessity governs all occurrence, that chance is an 
impossibility, and that all things are subject to a universal 
law. 

The Epicurean interest in the question of causality pro- 
ceeds from the thought that the discovery of natural causes, by 
removing superstitious fears, will add to tranquillity and hap- 
piness. As the materialistic theory of Democritus seems 
best to satisfy their demand, they adopt it with a significant 
modification. While they agree in general with Democritus 
in his theory of mechanical causation, they allow, at least in 
the beginning, a voluntary deviation of the atoms from their 
direct course, which admits, in the coming together of the 
atoms, an element of indeterminism, or chance. In the devel- 
opment of their theory, also, they find no occasion to lay stress 
upon the idea of the reign of law, which forms so prominent 
an element in the systems of Heraclitus, Democritus, and the 
Stoics. They deny, even more emphatically than did Democri- 
tus, the validity of the teleological interpretation of nature. 
" Nothing," says Lucretius, "was born in the body that we 
might use it, but that which is born begets for itself a use." 1 

In conformity with their general attitude toward knowl- 
edge, the Skeptics doubt the possibility of knowing the ulti- 
mate causes of things. In order to justify their attitude of 
suspense of judgment, which seems to them a necessary con- 
dition of tranquillity, they submit the notion of aetiology to a 

1 Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, Bk. IV, 834. 



44 CONCEPTIONS OF CAUSALITY 

searching criticism, in the course of which they anticipate 
many modern objections. In eight tropes Aenesidemns at- 
tempts to prove that all aetiology is futile. He calls attention 
to the fact that aetiology, which treats of unseen things, can 
give no trustworthy evidence regarding phenomena, nor can 
phenomena tell us anything of these unseen things, which may 
act according to a law peculiar to themselves ; that all inves- 
tigation regarding the causes of things is one-sided, since from 
many possible theories each philosopher chooses the one most 
consistent with his own hypothesis concerning the elements of 
things, disregarding the equally plausible views of his oppo- 
nents; that the philosophers often assign causes devoid of 
order for things which happen in an orderly way, or give 
reasons for things which conflict directly with experience ; and 
that they attempt to explain occurrences by causes which are 
quite as inscrutable as are the events themselves. 1 These 
tropes are intended to establish the fact that a cause in har- 
mony with all the systems of philosophy, including skepti- 
cism, is not possible, since phenomena can give no clew to the 
unknown. Aenesidemus further submits to criticism the con- 
cept of causal interaction. He attempts to show that the trans- 
fer of motion from one thing to another is equally unintelligible 
whether we regard the efficient cause as material or immaterial. 
Since the effect must coincide in nature with the cause, the 
immaterial cannot produce the material, nor the latter the 
former. Contact, usually assumed as a necessary condition of 
interaction, simply introduces a new term without escaping 
the difficulty. The time relation of the cause to the effect is 
also difficult to determine. If the cause is synchronous with 
the effect, cause and effect merge into one and become indis- 
tinguishable. If the cause precedes the effect, it is impossible 
to determine a moment of time in which the cause passes over 
into its effect. So long as the cause is active the effect is 
absent, and as soon as the effect is present the cause has ceased 
to act. To conceive of the cause as following the effect — the 
only remaining alternative — would be absurd. The Skeptics 

1 Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrhonic Sketches, Bk. I, ch. XVII. 



CONCEPTIONS OF CAUSALITY 45 

also emphasize the important thought of the relativity of cause 
and effect. A cause is a cause, they say, not per se, but only 
in relation to its effect; and an effect likewise is not an effect 
in itself, but only in reference to its cause. 

The Skeptical refutation of aetiology is the last Greek con- 
tribution to the subject of causality. We are now prepared to 
ask the question, how far, in the field of this special inquiry, 
the Greeks anticipated modern thought. 

Crude as were the theories of material causation to which 
the Ionians confined themselves, they none the less contained 
in germ the principle of the modern materialistic schools that 
matter in motion is the sole cause of all phenomena, both phy- 
sical and psychical. But of all the materialistic conceptions of 
causality presented by the Greeks, the mechanical theory pro- 
pounded by Democritus has held the most enduring place in 
philosophic thought. In the reawakening of the scientific 
movement, the mechanical view of the world is first represented 
by Galileo and Hobbes, but is reaffirmed by Descartes, who, 
although he places the ultimate causality in God, attempts a 
comprehensive mechanical explanation of nature. The rejec- 
tion by Democritus and the Epicureans of final ends, in the 
interest of maintaining a purely natural theory of causation, 
is indorsed by most of the mechanical theories. Bacon con- 
siders teleology as one of the dangerous " idols of the tribe," or 
illusions common to human nature in general. Descartes 
emphatically refuses to admit final causes as explanations of 
nature, declaring it presumptuous to seek to comprehend the 
purposes of God in creation. Spinoza, whose notion of causa- 
tion is that of a logical, or mathematical, ground and conse- 
quence, declares, with even greater vehemence, that it is absurd 
to speak of purposes with relation to the Deity, that all tele- 
ology is a gross species of anthropomorphism. This anti- 
teleological tendency of viewing creation recurs in the purely 
mechanical evolutionary systems of the present day, including 
that of Herbert Spencer. These systems do not deny purposive 
adaptations in nature, but explain them as the result of purely 
natural causes. Animals do not have fur in order to protect 



46 CONCEPTIONS OF CAUSALITY ' 

them from the cold, but because they have fur they are able 
to survive in spite of cold. Or, in the words of Lucretius, 
quoted before, " Xothing was born in the body that we might 
use it, but that which is born begets for itself a use." 1 The 
Positivists, also, who limit all knowledge to the sphere of 
phenomena, regard the conception of first causes or final ends 
as utterly absurd. Common to most of these thinkers, also, 
is the Heraclitic, Atomistic, and Stoic insistence on the uni- 
versal reign of law, on the subjection of all phenomena in the 
physical and mental realms to an unbroken chain of causes and 
effects. Yet Spencer and other English Positivists acknowl- 
edge that even determinism cannot be deduced as an absolute 
certainty from our limited experience. It is conceivable that 
the law we regard as uniform is not in reality universal. 
The relative alone is accessible to us ; we can never reach the 
absolute. 

The teleological view of causation, on the other hand, 
which was first enunciated by Anaxagoras, but more consist- 
ently developed by Plato and Aristotle, is emphasized by Leib- 
niz. He, however, denies the influence of the monads on one 
another and confines all change to the inner development of 
the monads, while our apparent experience of the interaction 
of objects is, as has been observed in another connection, due 
to a preestablished harmony grounded in God. Leibniz regards 
the world as a mechanism constructed to further the purposes 
of God. Thus he combines, as Aristotle in a different way 
attempted to do before him, the mechanical and teleological 
views of the universe. Kant, also, in the Critique of the 
Teleological Judgment, although he adopts the mechanical 
theory of nature, and insists that final ends are not satisfac- 
tory explanations of phenomena, yet leaves a place for tele- 
ology in experiences like that of life, which, while they are- 
from their very nature permanently unintelligible on any 
mechanical theory, force upon us the impression of purposive- 
ness. Teleology becomes an essential principle, also, in the 
German idealistic school, whose chief representatives are 

1 Lucretius, De Reruin Natura, Bk. IV, 834. 



CONCEPTIONS OF CAUSALITY 47 

Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. " The spread of the mechanical 
way of regarding the world," says Windelband, "was met by 
the German philosophy with the fundamental thought that all 
that is known in this way is but the phenomenal form and 
vehicle of a purposefully developing inner world, and that the 
true comprehension of the particular has to determine the sig- 
nificance that belongs to it in a purposeful connected whole of 
life." 1 

In Aristotle's insistence on a multitude of causes,- limited 
though they be in number, lies a suggestion of the modern 
notion that not one cause (or condition, as we should call it), 
but many, contribute to the reality of any individual existence. 
It is the principle that gives rise to the conception of a totality 
of causes as developed by Hegel, Lotze, Bowne, or Bradley. 
. From the Skeptical criticisms, which received their pri- 
mary inspiration from Protagoras, the outcome has been very 
fruitful for modern speculation. Although, as we have ob- 
served, Aenesidemus is inspired by a practical aim, while 
Hume simply draws the logical conclusions from his sensa- 
tionalists theory of knowledge, yet the Skeptic anticipates 
most of Hume's keen polemic against the concept of causality.' 
It never occurred to Aenesidemus, however, to criticise the 
doctrine from the standpoint of its origin ; and the theory that 
the belief in causality is a fiction arising from the habitual 
association of frequently conjoined ideas, originated with 
Hume. But the conclusion that the idea of causality admits 
of application only in the field of phenomena is derived by 
Hume, as well as by the Skeptics. When Hume tells us that 
so long as we lack knowledge of that power in the cause by 
which it is enabled to produce its effect, we have no adequate 
knowledge of causality, it is but another expression for the 
skeptical proposition that phenomena fail to reveal the un- 
known. It is Hume's special development of the Skeptical 
conclusions, together with the consideration that no experience 
can supply the element of necessary connection, that leads 
Kant to the conviction that the conception of causality, so far 

1 Windelband, History of Philosophy, p. 624. 



48 CONCEPTIONS OF CAUSALITY 

from being derived from experience, is a necessary condition 
of all experience. 

The Skeptical conception of the relativity of the causal 
relation is reemphasized by Hegel. " So far as we can speak 
of a definite content," he says, "there is no content in the 
effect that is not in the cause. ... It is in the effect that a 
cause first becomes actual and a cause. . . . The rain (the 
cause) and the wet (the effect) are the selfsame existing water. 
In point of form the cause (rain) is dissipated or lost in the 
effect (wet), but in that case the result can no longer be 
described as effect; for without the cause it is nothing, and 
we should have only the unrelated wet left." * 

Finally, all the Skeptical criticisms reappear in Lotze's 
critique of the common notions of causality, where the con- 
clusion is drawn that the connection between cause and effect 
must be more than the conditioning of one by the other — that 
voluntary activity is the sole causality. 

Modern investigations regarding the origin and validity 
of the concept of causality have led us to a fuller realization 
of the nature of the problem, a clearer formulation of its con- 
ditions, and a deeper insight into the difficulties surrounding 
its solution. Indeed, the problem as now apprehended, is 
scarcely recognizable as that over which the Greeks were strug- 
gling more than two thousand years ago; and yet the specula- 
tions of these early philosophers, despite the incompleteness 
of their conceptions and the one-sidedness of their development, 
have proved for all succeeding ages an invaluable heritage. 

i Wallace, The Logic of Hegel, p. 277. 



VI 
THE RELATION OE THOUGHT TO ITS OBJECT 

While any conscious epistemology, or definite shaping of 
a theory of knowledge, is foreign to early speculation, the 
search for an ultimate essence, an abiding element, a hidden 
cause, is in itself a tacit acknowledgment that absolute reality 
is not given in experience, but must be apprehended through 
reflection. Thus there arises very early in Greek philosophy 
the epistemological motif. Though not definitely expressed, 
there is implicit in the beginning of speculation, the question 
how knowledge can be valid for an extramental reality — how 
thought, a mere mental event, can represent a truth independ- 
ent of and beyond itself. 

Heraclitus, first among the philosophers of Greece, em- 
phasizes the idea that the senses are delusive and that truth 
is to be grasped through thought alone. "Eyes and ears," 
he says, "are bad witnesses to men having rude souls. 1 . . . 
The majority of people have no understanding of the things 
which they daily meet. 2 . . . Notwithstanding that all 
things happen according to reason, men act as though they 
never had any experience in regard to it. 8 . . . They do 
not understand how that which separates unites with itself. 
It is a unity of oppositions. 4 . . . Unite whole and part, 
agreement and disagreement, accordant and discordant, from 
all comes one, and from one all. 5 . . . The law of under- 
standing is common to all." 6 These brief fragments reveal, 
in addition to the rationalism of Heraclitus, other principles 

i Bywater, Heracliti Ephesii Reliquiae, Frag. IV. 4 Ibid., Frag. XLV. 

« Ibid., Frag. V. 5 md., Frag. LIX. 

3 Ibid., Frag. II. 6 ibid., Frag. XCI. 
e 49 



50 THE RELATION OF THOUGHT TO ITS OBJECT 

of great historic significance. Here we find the recognition 
of a universal element in the human understanding, and the 
assertion of the unity of opposites, a statement which in re- 
cent times has given rise to so much discussion regarding the 
true import of the theory of Heraclitus and his true rank in 
the history of philosophy. 

The central principle of the philosophy of Parmenides is, 
as we have seen, the idea that the sole reality is a unitary, 
unalterable being, and that all change and multiplicity are 
mere illusions. But since knowledge of this true being is 
attainable only by thought, and the senses delude us into 
an opinion of plurality, Parmenides, who in general stands 
opposed to Heraclitus, agrees with him in the opinion that the 
senses lead us astray, and that thought alone is capable of con- 
ducting us to the truth. Furthermore, since all that exists is 
one and homogeneous, if any reality is to be ascribed to 
thought, it must of necessity be identified with being. " Think- 
ing and that by reason of which thought exists, " says Parmeni- 
des, " are one thing ; " x or still more emphatically, " Thinking 
and being are one thing." x 

Zeno, the disciple of Parmenides, is the author of many 
famous arguments against the veracity of knowledge rely- 
ing on sensation. He recognizes as valid the principle that 
nothing can be real of which the same predicate must be both 
affirmed and denied. Thus he applies, although he does not 
distinctly formulate, the principle of contradiction. 

Since, in the systems of Empedocles and Anaxagoras, the 
basal elements of things are not cognizable through sense 
perception, but are discoverable only through a process of 
reasoning, these philosophers are ready to join the ranks of 
those who give no credence to perception, and insist that the 
path of reflection is the only road to truth. Empedocles gives 
expression to a primitive psychology in his statement that 
tilings are known to us by elements of like kind in ourselves. 
Further, he asserts that "all things have understanding and 

1 Journal of Speculative Philosophy, vol. IV, 1, Parmenides on Nature, 
pp. 0, 7. 



THE EELATION OE THOUGHT TO ITS OBJECT 51 

the power of thought " (jravra yap icrOi <j>povr]criv ^X €iv Ka ^ vw/^aTos 
atcrav) . 1 

With Protagoras the relativity implicit in the Heraclitean 
flux receives a definite expression. Abandoning all distinction 
between perception and thought, he occupies a purely sensa- 
tionalists standpoint. For him there is no truth save that 
which is experienced. If, therefore, the sensations fail to 
give us absolute truth, such truth is unattainable. But he 
finds it easy to show that things are as they appear only for 
an instant of perception, and that they thus exist only in the 
mind of the perceiving subject, whence he concludes that man 
is the measure of all things and that no universally valid truth 
exists. Since that which appears true to each man is true for 
him, perceptions, as such, are all true, but they convey no 
knowledge of the object which gives rise to them. By obser- 
vations such as these, Protagoras becomes the founder of the 
theory of the subjectivity of sense perception. He, for the 
first time, makes a conscious opposition of subject and object, 
and realizes that the subject must be at least a factor in the 
creation of phenomena. Perception, though distinguished 
from both subject and object, is, in the Protagorean theory, 
conditioned by both. 

From the hypothesis that virtue is dependent on knowl- 
edge, Socrates concludes that knowledge must be attainable, 
and therefore seeks for a principle of universal validity to 
transcend the Protagorean relativism. This principle he finds 
in the general notion, the concept, which contains the element 
common to the thought of many individuals. 

Democritus transcends the relativism of Protagoras, not 
by refuting the subjectivity of sense perception, but by refus- 
ing to acknowledge sensation as the only source of knowledge. 
Sensation gives us phenomenal reality, but reflection is neces- 
sary for the apprehension of the true constitutions of things, 
the atoms. Democritus, for the first time, makes the distinc- 
tion between what Locke calls primary and secondary qualities 
— primary qualities being those that follow from the combina- 

1 Mullach, Fragmenta Philosophorum Graecorum, vol. I, p. 9. 



52 THE RELATION OF THOUGHT TO ITS OBJECT 

tions of the atoms without dependence on the perceiving sub- 
ject (form, size, hardness, etc.); secondary qualities those 
which have no relation to the nature of things, but are depend- 
ent on our perception of the combination of the atoms (such 
as color, taste, sound, etc.). Democritus regards perception, 
which is directed to the secondary qualities, as obscure, in 
contrast to reflection, which gives a clear insight into the 
essential qualities of things. 

The starting point of Plato is the Socratic principle that 
knowledge is necessary for virtue ; but as the knowledge which 
virtue demands cannot consist in the changeable product of 
sensation, he agrees with his master that general conceptions 
alone constitute true knowledge. "Knowledge does not con- 
sist in impressions of sense, but in reasoning about them; in 
that only, truth and being can be attained." * But if concep- 
tual thinking gives true knowledge, while perception yields 
simply opinions, the content of such thought, the ideas, must 
have a permanent reality or being to distinguish it from the 
transitory phenomena of perception. "We participate in 
generation with the body and by perception; but we partici- 
pate with the soul by thought in true essence, which is always 
the same and immutable." 2 Thus arose the Platonic concep- 
tion of ideas as ontological realities, no longer mere products 
of the human mind, but the eternal prototypes, of which all 
things are copies. Plato assumes a definite relation of ideas 
to one another in a graded series ending with the idea of the 
good ; and he regards it as the business of philosophy, or dia- 
lectic, to discover and systemically set forth this relation. In 
the Meno and Phaedo he develops the doctrine of remi- 
niscence by which the ideas, conceived as metaphysical enti- 
ties, are most closely connected with his theory of knowledge. 
" Before we began to see or hear or to perceive in any way, we 
must have had a knowledge of absolute equality or we could 
not have referred to that the equals which are derived from 
the senses, and so of all the other ideas ; but if the knowledge 
which we acquired before birth was lost by us at birth, and 

i Plato, Theaetetus, 186. 2 Plato, Sophist, 248. 



THE EELATION OF THOUGHT TO ITS OBJECT 53 

if afterwards, by the use of the senses, we recovered that 
which we previously knew, this would be recollection. . . . 
Learning is recollection only. 1 . . . The truth of all things 
always existed in the soul." 2 Plato distinguishes opinion as 
a stage intermediate between knowledge and ignorance. 
"What essence is to generation, that truth is to belief. 3 . . . 
Those who see the many beautiful, and who yet neither see 
nor can be taught absolute beauty, who see the many just and 
not absolute justice and the like — such persons may be said to 
have opinion, but not knowledge ; but those who see the abso- 
lute and eternal and immutable may be said to know." 4 In 
the Charmides Plato questions the possibility of a science 
of knowledge. "Wisdom alone," says Charmides, "is a sci- 
ence of other sciences and of itself." 5 But Socrates, not con- 
tent with this statement, proceeds to discuss it without, 
however, arriving at any definite conclusion. In the same 
dialogue Plato raises the question as to whether the knowledge 
of what we know is the same as the knowledge of what we do 
not know, whether " the science of science will not also be the 
science of the absence of science." 5 He also makes the impor- 
tant distinction between ivhat one knows, a olSev, and that one 
knows, on olSev. " If a man knows only, and has only knowl- 
edge of knowledge and no further knowledge, the probability 
is that he will only know that he knows something, but how 
will this knowledge or science teach him to know what he 
knows ? " 6 

While Aristotle agrees with Plato that the universal is 
the proper object of knowledge and has a higher reality than 
the particular, he insists that the universal exists only in, 
and can be known only through, the particular; that essences 
and phenomena are inseparable. Although, therefore, the 
universal is first in value, the particular is, in time, the first 
step to knowledge. Induction must precede deduction. " The 
prior and more cognizable for us is what is nearer to sensation, 
but the absolutely prior and more cognizable is what is more 

i Plato, Phaedo, 75, 76. 3 Timaeus, 29. 5 Charmides, 166. 

2 Meno, 86. ^ * Republic, 479. 6 iud., 170. 



54 THE RELATION OF THOUGHT TO ITS OBJECT 

remote therefrom " (jrpbs 17/xas filv irporepa Kal yvonpi/JLUTepa, tol 
iyyvrepov rrjs alcrdrjcreoiSy a,7rAa>s 8e Trporepa kcu yvwpLfxwTepa ra irop- 
puirepov). 1 Aristotle, therefore, gives to sensation a very 
prominent place in his theory of knowledge. He regards 
sensuous perception as the result of qualities which exist 
potentially in the thing and actually in the perceiving sub- 
ject. To the process of demonstrative knowledge he recog- 
nizes two impassable limits ; on the one hand, the individual, 
the object of sense perception, which, as being contingent, can 
never be demonstrated; and, on the other hand, the most gen- 
eral principles or axioms, which must be apodictic, since all 
demonstration presupposes something more universal than that 
which is to be deduced. These ultimate principles are not 
derived from experience, but are innate in the soul. One of 
the most incontestable truths is the principle of contradiction. 
" It is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be at the 
same time." 2 Truth, according to Aristotle, consists in the 
agreement of thought with reality. " For indeed the assertion 
that entity does not exist and that non-entity does is false- 
hood, but that entity exists and that non-entity does not exist 
is truth." 3 Truth and error are found only in the judgment 
and in the imagination; perceptions, as such, never lead us 
astray. Eeason is in part active and in part passive. In his 
table of ten categories, Aristotle makes the first attempt to 
classify the highest concepts of the understanding. 

In the doctrine of the Stoics the only sources of knowl- 
edge are perceptions, and the conclusions based thereon; and 
the sole activity of the mind is directed toward converting 
into knowledge such material as the mind receives through the 
senses. The Stoics picture the soul at birth as an empty 
tablet (tabula rasa), upon which, in the course of time, the 
sensations register their impressions as a seal leaves its mark 
upon a piece of wax. They deny emphatically that any ideas 
are innate in the soul. The most significant feature of the 
Stoic theory of knowledge is the search for a criterion of truth. 

1 Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, I, 2 (p. 184 of Orgunon). 

2 Metaphysics, Bk. II, ch. II, § 3. « Ibid., Bk. Ill, ch. VIII, § 1. 



THE EELATIQN OE THOUGHT TO ITS OBJECT 55 

This standard is found in the power of compelling belief inher- 
ent in certain perceptions. "By itself a perception does not 
necessarily carry conviction or assent, for there can be no 
assent until the faculty of judgment is directed toward the 
perception, either for the purpose of allowing or rejecting it 
— truth and error residing in judgment. Assent, therefore, 
generally speaking, rests with us. Some of our perceptions 
are, however, of such a kind that they at once oblige us to 
bestow on them assent, compelling us not only to regard them 
as probable, but also as true and conformable to the actual 
nature of things. Such perceptions produce in us that strength 
of conviction which the Stoics call a conception; they are 
therefore termed conceptional perceptions. Whenever a per- 
ception forces itself upon us in this irresistible form, we are 
no longer dealing with a fiction of the imagination, but with 
something real; but whenever the strength of conviction is 
wanting, we cannot be sure of the truth of our perception. 
Or, expressing the same idea in the language of Stoicism, con- 
ceptional or irresistible perceptions are the standard of truth." 1 

The Epicureans adopt even more unreservedly than the 
Stoics the sensationalistic theory of knowledge. Their theo- 
retical criterion of truth is sensation, but their practical test is 
the feeling of pleasure or pain. Since sensation is the only 
source of knowledge, all perceptions must be true, for how 
could reason, which is dependent on sensation, refute the tes- 
timony of the senses? Error belongs not to sensation, but to 
the judgment which draws unwarranted inferences from the 
sensations caused by " pictures " of the object. 

The Skeptics doubt the possibility of any knowledge, 
whether derived from sensation or reflection. The aim of 
Skepticism is to secure first twox*], or suspense of judgment, 
and later drapa^ia, or imperturbability of spirit. The method 
is to oppose every argument adduced in rival theories by one of 
equal weight. It is the Skeptic's boast that he neither affirms 
nor denies, but maintains the attitude of ever seeking enlight- 
enment. His sole criterion is the phenomenon, which cannot 

1 Zeller, Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics, pp. 88, 89. 



L.ofC. 



56 THE RELATION OE THOUGHT TO ITS OBJECT 

be doubted, since it is based upon involuntary feeling. The 
question in dispute is not whether an object appears as it 
appears, but whether in reality it is as it appears to us. The 
Skeptical tropes attempt to prove that phenomena are so rela- 
tive and changing that no certain knowledge can be based on 
them. The most important of these tropes are those on aeti- 
ology, which have already been discussed, and the ten tropes 
on the relativity of sense perception. The latter call attention 
to the differences in the constitutions of the various animals, 
which prevent them from gaining the same ideas of objects 
through the senses; to diversities even among men; to differ- 
ences in the sense organs which cause the eye to assign to 
paintings elevations and depressions which to the touch appear 
as flat; to the varying effect on sense impressions of diverse 
physiological conditions as of satiety and sobriety ; to the dif- 
ferences in the appearance of objects caused by quantity and 
physical state, by distance and position, and by the medium 
through which the object is viewed; to the relativity of every- 
thing to other things and to the person judging; and to the 
variability in different countries of customs, laws, and religious 
and philosophical beliefs. 1 From these tropes the Skeptics con- 
clude that things in themselves cannot be known and that the 
only true philosophic attitude is that of doubt or suspense of 
judgment. 

This review shows that in the epistemology of the Greeks 
some of the significant tendencies of modern theories of knowl- 
edge had already come to light. The rationalism of Heraclitus, 
Panne n ides, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Plato, and Democritus, 
anticipates that of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, or Wolff; the 
sensationalism of Protagoras, the Stoics, and the Epicureans, 
is reproduced by that of Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, 
Mill, and the Positivists; while the skepticism of the Sophists 
and the Skeptics has certain affinities with that of Hume. 

To consider, in greater detail, the anticipations in the 
field of epistemology, let us turn first to Heraclitus. In his 
recognition of universality as a test of validity, he particularly 

1 Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrhonic Sketches, Bk. I, ch. XIV. 



THE RELATION -OF THOUGHT TO ITS OBJECT 57 

foreshadows Kant, as also in his conception of a unity, which 
includes the manifold in itself. But it is in relation to the 
philosophy of Hegel that the utterances of Heraclitus assume 
the greatest significance. "Bei Heraklit," says Hegel, "ist 
also zuerst die philosophische Idee in ihrer speculativen Form 
anzutreffen. . . . Hier sehen wir Land. Es ist kein Satz 
des Heraklit den ich nicht in meine Logik auf genommen ; " 1 
and Lasalle, further emphasizing the same view, says : " Hera- 
klit dagegen hat das Werden seinem Wahrhaften Begriffe nach 
gehabt, als die Einheit des absoluten Gegensatzes von Sein 
und Nichtsein und deren Uebergang in einander. Er hat die 
Bewegung als reine Negativitat gefaszt." 2 Dr. G. T. Patrick, 
in his comments on Hegel's interpretation of Heraclitus, sug- 
gests that the latter's idea of the unity of opposites applies 
only to physical change, that the significant expressions: "We 
are and we are not, " 3 " That which separates unites with itself ; 
it is a unity of oppositions," 4 evidence no more than a recog- 
nition on the part of Heraclitus of the obvious fact that differ- 
ent properties inhere in the same thing. Perhaps the truth 
lies somewhere between the extreme views of Hegel and of 
Patrick; but whatever interpretation we may put upon the 
obscure utterances of Heraclitus, we cannot deny that there 
were implicit in his system, though not consciously present to 
his own mind, some of the principles of the Hegelian philoso- 
phy. "The unlike is joined together," says Heraclitus, "and 
from differences results the most beautiful harmony. 5 . . . 
Unite whole and part, agreement and disagreement, from all 
comes one, and from one all." 6 " There is absolutely nothing," 
says Hegel, " in which we cannot and must not point to con- 
tradictions or opposite attributes ; " 7 and he lays great stress, 
also, upon the thought that " each conception with which the 
human mind has thought reality becomes a moment or factor, 

1 Hegel, Vorlesungen iiber die Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. I, p. 328. 

2 La Salle, Die Philosophie Herakleitos des Dunklen von Ephesos, vol. 
I, P- 7. 

3 Bywater, Heracliti Ephesii Reliquiae, Frag. LXXXI. 

4 Ibid., Frag. XLV. 5 Ibid., Frag. XLVI. 6 iud., Frag. LIX, 
7 Wallace, The Logic of Hegel, p. 169. 



58 THE RELATION OF THOUGHT TO ITS OBJECT 

which receives its full value only when introduced into the 
whole." * " All things take place by strife," 2 says Heraclitus. 
"Contradiction," says Hegel, "is the very moving principle 
of the world." 3 

In the epistemology of Parmenides the most noteworthy 
feature is the identification of thought and being. Here, 
again, we have a fruitful principle imperfectly conceived. To 
identify the theory of Parmenides with modern idealism, as 
represented by Berkeley, Fichte, or Hegel, would be fallacious, 
since the Parmenidean philosophy lacks the element of spir- 
ituality. Paradoxical as it may sound, the identification of 
thought and being, as set forth by the Eleatic, may be described 
as materialistic idealism. Thought and being are one, not 
because matter is reduced to a phase of thought, but because 
thought is conceived as analogous to matter. Nevertheless, 
the motive to this identification — the impulse to represent 
existence as an all-embracing unity, and yet concede reality to 
thought — governs all the later systems of idealism. 

Zeno's application of the principle of contradiction, which 
takes more definite shape in Aristotle, meets us again in Leib- 
niz, who makes the absence of contradiction a fundamental 
condition of validity and a test of the principle of sufficient 
reason. 

Empedocles' opinion that all things have the power of 
thought also foreshadows Leibniz, who regards all the monads 
as souls having perception {petites perceptions), although he 
maintains that apperceptive self-consciousness belongs only to 
the higher monads. 

Through his theory of the subjectivity of sense perception, 
Protagoras becomes the legitimate forerunner of Berkeley, 
Hume, and all the subjective idealists whose epistemology 
rests upon a sensationalistic basis. 

Democritus, by his doctrine, derived from Protagoras, 
that sense qualities, such as colors, sounds, etc., are entirely 

1 Windelband, History of Philosophy , p. 612. 

2 Bywater, Heracliti Ephesii Reliquiae, Frag. XLVI. 
8 Wallace, The Logic of Hegel, p. 223. 



THE EELATION. OF THOUGHT TO ITS OBJECT 59 

subjective and, by his consequent limitation of things to quan- 
titative determinations, reminds us of Galileo, Hobbes, and 
Descartes, and still more forcibly of Locke, to whom (because 
he first applied the terms primary and secondary qualities to 
represent the distinction) the origination of this doctrine is 
often erroneously attributed. 

At first thought the Platonic philosophy, which regards 
ideas as the sole reality, suggests comparison with Berkeley, 
Fichte, and Hegel; but here again, as in the case of Par- 
menides, we must beware of rash conclusions. The Platonic 
idealism is mainly a system of metaphysics, and only in so far 
as it is connected with the doctrine of reminiscence has it any 
significance for the theory of knowledge. The ideas, as mere 
content of thought, having an existence independent of the 
mind, cannot legitimately be identified with the ideas of sub- 
jective or of absolute idealism, which are dependent on the 
mind's activity. Yet there are points in Plato that are sug- 
gestive of Hegel. Hegel himself awards to Plato the honor of 
having invented dialectic, and compares his own theory, that 
education or development is required to bring out into con- 
sciousness what is therein contained, with the Platonic doc- 
trine, that all learning is reminiscence, and that the truth of 
all things always existed within the soul. Plato's notion of 
a graded series of ideas is another principle that has become 
fruitful in the philosophy of Hegel. 

The view of Aristotle, the Stoics, and the Epicureans, 
that all error should be referred to the judgment, is upheld by 
Descartes, who maintains that we err only when we judge of 
what we do not clearly and distinctly perceive; and also by 
Locke, who insists that no ideas, as they appear in the mind, 
are either true or false, but that all truth and falsity belong 
to propositions which relate ideas. Like Aristotle, again, 
Leibniz recognizes two kinds of non-demonstrative or intuitive 
knowledge, — the contingent facts of experience and the uni- 
versal apodictic principles of reason. In his recognition of a 
passive and an active element in the mind, Aristotle may be 
compared with Kant, although the former makes the reason 



60 THE RELATION OF THOUGHT TO ITS OBJECT 

partly active and partly passive, while the latter, differentiat- 
ing the faculties of the ruind, assigns its receptivity to the 
sensibility and its activity to reason. It should be noted, too, 
that Kant's doctrine of the spontaneity of reason, which 
regards the objects of thought as a product of the thinking 
process, differs radically from Aristotle's view, which regards 
these objects as existent independently of thought. Like 
Aristotle, also, Kant places much emphasis on the deduction 
of the categories of the understanding; but in the episte- 
mology of Kant a new significance is attached to the term. 
While the categories of Aristotle are simply the highest 
classes under which the objects of knowledge may be subsumed, 
or the most general forms in which being may be expressed, 
the categories of Kant constitute the formal element in the 
mind's activity, not an abstraction from experience, but a 
necessary condition of all experience. 

The search of the Stoics for a universal standard as the 
test of truth is repeated by Descartes, and their criterion of 
irresistibility or the power of carrying conviction varies but 
slightly from the Cartesian criteria of clearness and distinct- 
ness. In the doctrine of the sensational origin of knowledge, 
and in the limitation of the activity of the mind to the 
combination of perceptions, in the denial of innate ideas, and 
in the picturing of the soul at birth as an empty tablet, the 
epistemology of the Stoics bears a striking resemblance to that 
of Locke. 

The Skeptical tropes, which, as we have seen, tend mainly 
to establish the subjectivity of sense perception, embody the 
arguments which prompt Descartes to characterize as confused 
knowledge the impressions gained through the senses, and 
which induce Locke to make the distinction before alluded to 
between the primary and secondary qualities of things. The 
trope based upon the differences in perceptions gained through 
the various senses anticipates, in a measure, some of the most 
forcible arguments in Berkeley's New Theory of Vision. 
Still more suggestive is the trope which impresses the thought 
that things as we know them do not exist absolutely, but that 



THE RELATION OF THOUGHT TO ITS OBJECT 61 

all things exist in mutual relation. This thought assumes 
great significance in the Hegelian system, and becomes a cen- 
tral principle in the philosophy of Lotze. We must look for 
the being of things, according to Lotze, " in the reality of the 
relations in which the things stand to each other. . . . Not 
to be at any place, not to have any position in the complex of 
other things, not to undergo any operation from anything, nor 
to display itself by the exercise of any activity upon anything 
— to be thus void of relation is just that in which we should 
find the nonentity of a thing if it was our purpose to define 
it." * The Skeptical conclusion that knowledge can apprehend 
nothing beyond phenomena is suggestive of Kant's distinc- 
tion of cognizable phenomena from the unknowable noumena, 
of Spencer's contrast of appearance with an unknowable reality, 
and of the attitude of Comte and other Positivists, who con- 
fine all their investigations within the field of phenomena and 
declare, with unhesitating assurance, that nothing absolute 
exists. Finally, the Skeptical tendency, as a whole, finds its 
chief analogue in Hume. He differs from the Skeptics, how- 
ever, in justifying inquiry within its proper sphere and in 
condemning only such assumptions as are not, and can never 
be, supported by the guaranty of sense perception, the ulti- 
mate source, according to Hume, of all our knowledge. " Should 
it be asked of me," says Hume, "whether I be really one of 
those Skeptics who hold that all is uncertain, and that our 
judgment is not in any thing possessed of any measures of 
truth and falsehood, I should reply that this question is en- 
tirely superfluous, and that neither I nor any other person 
was ever sincerely and constantly of that opinion. Nature, 
by an absolute and uncontrollable necessity, has determined us 
to judge as well as to breathe and feel." 2 "The great sub- 
verter of Pyrrhonism, or the excessive principles of skepticism, 
is action or employment, and the occupations of common life." 3 
But there is a more moderate skepticism which " may be under- 

1 Lotze, Metaphysic, vol. I, p. 39. 

2 Hume, A treatise on Human Nature, vol. I, pp. 474 and 475. 

3 Hume, Enquiry concerning Human Understanding ', p. 158. 



62 THE RELATION OF THOUGHT TO ITS OBJECT 

stood in a very reasonable sense, and is a necessary preparative 
to the study of philosophy by preserving a proper impartiality 
in our judgments and weaning our mind from all those preju- 
dices which we may have imbibed from education or rash 
opinion. 1 . . . Another species of mitigated skepticism, 
which may be of advantage to mankind and which may be the 
natural result of the Pyrrhonian doubts and scruples is the 
limitation of our inquiries to such subjects as are best adapted 
to the narrow capacity of the human understanding." 2 

Thus we catch glimpses in the philosophy of the Greeks of 
thoughts often regarded as the special contribution of modern 
theories of knowledge. With but a dim apprehension of the 
creative activity of the mind, the Greek philosophers did not 
clearly perceive the fact that the question of the validity of 
knowledge is inseparably bound up with the problem of the 
ultimate nature of things — that a rational metaphysics must of 
necessity rest upon a sound basis of epistemology. In their 
day epistemology never advanced to the dignity of a science, 
but they gathered together much of the material that has made 
that science a possibility. 

1 Hume, Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, p. 150. 
2/6icZ.,p. 162. 



CONCLUSION 

From a study of the various problems considered in this 
paper, as developed in Greek and modern philosophy, it 
becomes manifest that the germs, or fundamental elements, of 
the leading metaphysical and epistemological systems of mod- 
ern times existed already in the philosophy of the Greeks. 
Although the foremost philosophical systems of our day, with 
their more scientific equipment, their wider outlook, and their 
keener apprehension of problems, bear little resemblance on 
the surface to the speculations of Heraclitus, Parmenides, or 
Democritus, of Plato, Aristotle, or Aenesidemus, an analysis 
of both ancient and modern systems into their essential ele- 
ments not only brings to light many remarkable agreements, 
but discloses the fact that the leading ideas of the Greeks are 
as vital and vivifying to-day as they were more than two thou- 
sand years ago. We have seen virtually the same problems 
engaging the attention of philosophy throughout all ages j we 
have observed similar motives giving rise in widely separated 
times to similar solutions; and we have discovered, amid mul- 
tiform changes in method and detail, a unity of purpose which 
dominates the whole history of speculative thought. While 
each age has furnished its contribution to a constantly evolving 
philosophy, it has been the special work of modern thinkers to 
support, by observation and demonstration, the prophetic con- 
ceptions grasped by the Greeks through intuition; to correct 
one-sided tendencies, improve imperfections, and clear up 
cloudy and confused ideas ; and to systematize and coordinate 
uncorrelated truths. 



63 






1 COPY DEL, JO CAT, DIV, 
DEC 9 1901 






